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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



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THE PROPER GIFT 

OF THE 

CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 



AND 

THE SACRAMENTAL MODE OF ITS 
TRANSMISSION 

BY / 
The Rev. THOMAS RICHEY, D.D. 

S, Mark? s-in~the-Bowerie Professor of Ecclesiastical History , General 
Theological Seminary, New York 



37 



■ o^tf-a- 1 



NEW YORK 

CROTHERS & KORTH 

246 Fourth Avenue 

1897 




6< 



Copyright, 1897, by 
CROTHERS & KORTH 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 



TO THE 

Rev. R. B. FAIRBAIRN, D.D., LL.D 

WARDEN OF S. STEPHEN'S COLLEGE, 

THIS REVIEW OF THE ORDINAL, 

MADE AT HIS REQUEST, 

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

On Rites and Ceremonies i 



CHAPTER II. 
The Sacrament of Order 17 

CHAPTER III. 
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons . . . .31 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Minor Orders 51 

CHAPTER V. 
The Doctrine of Intention 64 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Revised Ordinal 76 

CHAPTER VII. 
L'Envoi 90 



LEO XIII. AND ANGLICAN ORDERS, 



I. 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 

BEYOND the fact of the institution of the 
two great Sacraments of the Evangelical Dis- 
pensation, we have no fixed order of Rites 
and Ceremonies prescribed for the use of the 
Church. The reason for this we have not to 
go far to seek. Had our Lord Himself put the 
stamp of His divine authority upon things of 
secondary importance, they must of necessity 
have remained fixed under all changes of times 
and circumstances, without regard to peculiar- 
ities of taste and temperament among different 
races and conditions of men. 

There was an additional reason why it was 
not expedient at the first to establish an order 
of ritual for the infant Church. A Jew, ac- 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 



cording to the flesh, Jesus did not attempt to 
break away from all the traditions of the past : 
He came, as he tells us, not to destroy but to 
fulfil; He aimed, not to abolish, but to trans- 
form. Instead of destroying that which had 
already been established, His custom was to 
plant the germ of the new order of things in 
the soil which had been providentially pro- 
vided for it, and leave it there to assimilate 
by virtue of its own formative instinct, what- 
ever was of permanent value in the dispensa- 
tion ready to perish. 

How much the great Head of the Church 
saw fit to communicate to the Apostles, when 
He spoke to them, during the forty days after 
His resurrection from the dead, of " the things 
pertaining to the Kingdom of God" (Acts i. 
3), we know not. But of this we may be sure, 
that the " glory " of the new dispensation was 
not in this respect inferior to the old, when 
Moses for forty days was taken up into the 
Mount, and had revealed to Him the images 
of the things which, in process of time, are to 
reach their fulfilment under the economy of 
the Holy Ghost. 






ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 3 

In dealing with the mystery of sacramental 
grace, we have always to bear in mind that, 
in themselves, words are mere counters, liable 
to change as differentiation takes place, giving 
to them, instead of the more general, a tech- 
nical and specific meaning. This is true of 
the words " Rites " and " Ceremonies " : they 
have a common or general use; and a techni- 
cal and specific use, a thing to be kept stead- 
ily in view in dealing with the subject now 
under consideration. 

Our Lord Himself, as we have seen, told 
His Disciples when He instituted the two 
great Sacraments generally necessary to salva- 
tion, what they were to do, but He did not lay 
down any positive rule as to the way they 
were to do it. We find, accordingly, that in 
dealing with the two great sacramental rites 
of the Incarnation, the Church has seen fit to 
order that it is necessary, as far as possible, 
to preserve intact both the matter and the 
form of the original institution. The matter 
of Baptism is water according to divine insti- 
tution : the form of words, the Name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 



Ghost. For a like reason, bread and wine are 
to be used in the Holy Eucharist as the mat- 
ter of the rite; and we are to use the same 
manual acts, and, as far as possible, in the act 
of consecration, the same words which our 
Lord Himself made use of in instituting the 
rite. If these provisions, for any sufficient 
reason, cannot be carried out in the letter, 
they must at least in substance be recognized 
as necessary to the proper form of the Sacra- 
ment. Reverence, not less than regard to 
the authority which of necessity belongs to the 
words and acts of the Son of God, requires all 
this at our hands. 

In addition to the matter and form of the 
Sacrament, there are also ceremonial adjuncts 
which demand consideration. It is nothing 
more than meet and right that holy things 
should have holy places set apart for them. 
There are associations connected with every 
sacramental rite, which crave expression in 
conformity with the mystery that is repre- 
sented sacramentally to our view. In addi- 
tion to the use of water in Baptism, as of the 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 5 

essential matter of the rite, it was the custom 
to use oil and salt to represent the calling of 
the baptized to be the salt of the earth, and 
the light of the world. But it is always to be 
borne in mind that these ceremonial accom- 
paniments, intended to add dignity and to 
give significance to the rite, neither increased 
by addition, nor took away by diminution, 
from the essential character of the Sacrament. 
' The promise of Grace is not made to acci- 
dental ceremonies but to essential ones/' 
Bellarmine, on the Sacrament of Order (ch. ix), 
rightly says. 

There never has been any question, in like 
manner, that in the rite of Ordination the 
only two things, absolutely necessary to the 
validity of the rite, are the laying on of 
hands, after the manner of the Apostles, and 
the invocation of the Holy Ghost. The one 
corresponds to the matter, the other to the 
form of the rite. The hand, as the instru- 
ment of conveyance, is of the matter of the 
rite, consisting as it does of the transmission 
of that which had been received by the Apos- 
tles, and their successors for the carrying on 



6 ON RITES AND CEREMONIES, 

of the work of the Ministry; the invocation of 
the Holy Ghost is of the form of the rite, for 
it belongs to the Holy Ghost, in His relation 
to the economy of the Church, to take of the 
things of Christ and give them unto us. 

There is a difference, it is true, between the 
two Sacramental rites, through which is con- 
veyed the grace of the Incarnation, and the 
rites which belong to the economy of the 
Holy Ghost, but the latter no less than the 
former, have an indelible character, which, as 
we shall see hereafter, separate them from all 
common uses. The breathing upon the Apos- 
tles when after His resurrection, Jesus met 
with them and said, " Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost : whose soever sins ye remit, they are 
remitted unto them ; whose soever sins ye 
retain they are retained " (John xx. 21, 22), was 
manifestly of the nature of a Sacramental Act, 
differing in kind from the promise given to 
Peter to bind and loose before the Resurrection 
(Matt. xvi. 19). The act of breathing was an 
outward and visible sign of the gift of the 
Holy Spirit to the whole body of the Apos- 
tles, proceeding from the risen Lord, now de- 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 7 

clared to be the Son of God with power by the 
resurrection from the dead. 1 The Twelve be- 
fore the resurrection had been separated and 
trained as " Apostles designate": Now that 
He is about to be taken away from them, 
Jesus sends them forth, as He had been sent 
by the Father, to supply His visible presence 
among men. 

If such be the august nature of the rite of 
Ordination, it is surely to be expected that, as 
in the case of other Sacramental Rites, it shall 
be celebrated with ceremonial observances 
worthy of its high dignity. One of the earli- 
est of these ceremonial adjuncts was the plac- 
ing of the Book of the Gospels on the head of 
a Bishop, when set apart to his sacred office. 

1 " The breath, Ttrevua, is The Spirit which the Lord 

an emblem of the Spirit (John now imparted to them was 

iii. 8), and by 'breathing/ as His Spirit, or, as it may be 

S. Augustine observes, the expressed, the Spirit as dwell- 

Lord showed that His Spirit ing in Him. By this He first 

was not the Spirit of the quickened them, and then sent, 

Father only, but also His according to His promise, the 

own. This act is described as Paraclete to be with them and 

one (£veq)v6f/6e) and not re- to supply all power for the 

peated. The gift was once exercise of their functions." — 

for all not to individuals, but Westcott. 
to the abiding body. . . 



8 ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 

What symbol could be more significant than 
the four-fold representation of our Lord's 
own life and ministry, given by the inspiration 
of the Holy Ghost for the instruction and 
guidance of the Church ! 

But these and like ceremonial acts, it is ever 
to be remembered, have nothing to do with 
the essence of the rite: they do not, be they 
less or be they more, affect the validity of the 
rite when duly performed by the laying on of 
hands, and the invocation of the Holy Ghost. 
And yet they are not altogether without mean- 
ing and significance : while not of the essence 
of the Rite, they have their value as signs of 
investiture and induction into office. 

Investiture, as a token of entrance upon a 
new condition of life, was a time-honoured 
custom, among the Greeks, and Romans, as 
well as among the ancient Hebrews. The as- 
sumption of the toga virilis was kept as a fes- 
tival and celebrated by festal rites among the 
Romans. The putting on of the philoso- 
pher's gown was preceded by the taking of a 
bath, and was looked upon in the light of en- 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 9 

tering upon the office of a teacher of philoso- 
phy with a feeling amounting to religious de- 
votion. The candidate for knighthood in the 
middle ages was solemnly invested with the 
consecrated weapons of his warfare before en- 
tering upon his high calling. So was it also 
in religion. Ordination was looked upon, not 
only as a sacred rite, but partook of the nature 
of an induction into office. The Deacon re- 
ceived for his use the ripidion or Sacred Fan, to 
guard against the approach of insect life to the 
sacred species. The Priest was invested with 
a stole, corresponding to the yoke of the ox in 
preparing the ground for the casting in of the 
seed. In course of time, these ceremonial ad- 
juncts were increased or altered, according to 
the varying tastes of East or West, North or 
South. While the ritual act itself remained 
fixed as to matter and form, the ceremonial 
investiture, symbolizing the induction into 
office, was changed, without affecting the 
validity of the rite itself. 

All this seems simple and plain enough : and 
yet we know as a matter of fact that it is con- 
stantly forgotten, not only in the affairs of 



IO ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 

ordinary life, but also in religion. We have 
a notable example of this in the way a cere- 
monial custom, intended at the first to symbo- 
lize induction into office, came to be declared 
as of the essence of the Rite of Ordination, to 
the confounding of the difference between es- 
sential and non-essential, of Ordination as a 
sacramental act bestowing grace, and induc- 
tion into office for a particular purpose. 

It grew to be a custom at Rome in Or- 
dination for the Pope to give the new Priest 
the vestments to be used in the celebration 
of the Mass, and the instruments of his 
office, gold or silver; and for a procession to 
be made by the people of the parish, accom- 
panied by the Pope and the parish Priest, 
as a conclusion of the ceremony. It was 
a fitting and impressive mode of induction 
into office, in entire accordance with the 
manners and customs of the age when it was 
first introduced. But as time went on, what 
had at the first been intended to serve the 
purpose of a ceremonial induction into office, 
came to be regarded, upon doctrinal grounds, 
as an essential part of the rite itself. Euge- 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. II 

nius IV. (1431-1447) ignorant, or forgetful, of 
the difference between the ceremonial adjunct, 
and the rite itself properly so-called, declared 
the " porrectio instrumentorum " to be of the 
essence of the Rite, notwithstanding that the 
Council of Florence over which Eugenius pre- 
sided, acknowledged the orders of the Greek 
Church, conferred without the giving of the 
paten and the chalice, to be valid orders. 

The immediate result of this decree of Eu- 
genius IV. was to introduce confusion and 
disorder into the Ordinal of the Western 
Church. The question arose, when does the 
Ordination take effect ? Is it at the beginning 
of the rite, when, after the laying of hands 
silently, the hands are extended and the in- 
vocation is made, or is it at the conclusion of 
the Rite, when the ' porrectio instrumento- 
rum ' takes place, and the Accipe Spiritum 
Sanctum, etc., with the power to remit sins, is 
uttered? To maintain the former would be to 
contradict Eugenius IV. : to assert the latter, is 
to affirm that the laying on of hands and the 
invocation of the Holy Ghost, do not consti- 
tute the matter and the form of Ordination. 



12 ON RITES AND CEREMONIES, 

The only way out of the difficulty was to di- 
vide the action into two parts, making the first 
to consist in the laying on of hands and the 
invocation for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and 
the second, in the giving of the power to sac- 
rifice and forgive sins, as defining the function 
of the Priesthood. 

But the end was not yet. When Morinus, 
converted by Cardinal du Perron to the Roman 
Church, was called by Urban VIII. in 1639 to 
Rome to assist the congregation appointed to 
assimilate the creeds and rituals of the East, 
to the Roman rites, it was found, after an 
exhaustive examination, that the Accipe Spiri- 
tum Sanctum of the Roman Ordinal had no 
existence prior to the fourth century; and the 
" traditio instrumentorum, ,, declared by Eu- 
genius IV. to be of the essence of the rite, 
had no recognition, in either East or West, 
until after the tenth century. The conclu- 
sion to be drawn was that for one thousand 
years there had been no Priesthood in either 
Eastern or Western Christendom. It was a 
conclusion from which there could be no es- 
cape, except by way of retreat. ' Forced to 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 1 3 

it," Morinus says, " the schoolmen have at 
last betaken themselves to imposition of hands, 
which alone the ancient Fathers and all the 
ancient Rituals, both Greek and Latin, ac- 
knowledge." (De Sac. Ord., pt. iii, ex. 2, 
ch. i, § 2.) 

The learned Benedictine, Martene, of the 
congregation of S. Maur (1654), in his De 
Antiquis Ecclesice Ritibus arrived at the same 
conclusion: "Since it cannot be said that 
the delivery of the instruments are of the mat- 
ter of ordination to the Presbyterate, it fol- 
lows," he says, " that the essence of it is in 
the imposition of the hands and the prayers 
that follow after. . . This alone the 

Orientals, this alone the ancient Fathers, this 
alone (Holy) Scriptures acknowledge." (Lib. 
i, ch. viii, art. ix, sec. 18.) The ground thus 
taken by Morinus and Martene has been 
accepted by the leading authorities of the 
Roman Communion, was adopted with one or 
two reservations by the Council of Trent, 1 and 

1 The Council of Trent and form of the Sacrament : 
(Sess. xxiii.) does not define it confines itself to anathema- 
positively the proper matter tizing those who deny that the 



14 ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 

is generally admitted at the present day as 
beyond dispute. 

It would appear then — -and this is the first 
point of our contention — that the Church at 
Rome according to the testimony of its own 
chosen and accredited witnesses, in utter dis- 
regard of Catholic tradition, and in defiance of 
the fundamental difference between rites and 
ceremonies as such, incorporated into the 
Ordinal of the Western Church, and made part 
and parcel of the constituent elements of the 
Rite of Ordination, a ceremonial custom un- 
known to the universal Church, before the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries. It would ap- 
pear, moreover, that at the very time when the 
Eastern Church was engaged in seeking to rec- 
oncile the differences between Constantinople 
and Rome, Eugenius IV. in his celebrated 
letter to the Armenians, notwithstanding the 
fact that the Council of Florence over which 
he presided received without question the or- 
ders of the Eastern Church by imposition of 

words Accipe Spiritum Sane- "the ceremonies of order" 
turn, etc., do not confer the are not necessary to be ob- 
gift of the Holy Ghost, and served (Can. iv, v). 



ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 1 5 

hands and the invocation of the Holy Ghost, 
declared that the Roman addition of the giv- 
ing and taking of the chalice and paten must 
be regarded as part of the matter and form of 
ordination, and of the essence of the Sacrament. 

And it appears, as the result of this declara- 
tion, that the Roman See is not only open to 
the imputation of insincerity in its dealings 
with the Eastern Church at the time, even as 
it is open to the same charge in opening nego- 
tiations with the Anglican Church at the pres- 
ent time, but it is liable to the still more 
serious charge of making its own act in the 
laying on of hands invalid by placing the per- 
son ordained in the position of one who is 
still to be made the recipient of additional 
powers, not provided for in the Apostolic Rite 
of Ordination. 

The truth is that the Roman Ordinal, as it 
now stands, is an aggregation of parts, consist- 
ing (i) of the original Apostolic rite of im- 
position of hands and prayer of invocation, 
which sufficed for over one thousand years, (2) 
of the mediaeval ceremony of the " Porrectio," 
or presentation of the vessels, originally a 



1 6 ON RITES AND CEREMONIES. 

formula of induction, and (3) of a new imposi- 
tion of hands in connection with the prayer 
Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, etc., by way of ap- 
pendix or supplement to the whole. We have 
then (1) a silent imposition of hands, (2) an 
imposition of hands with a prayer of invoca- 
tion, (3) another imposition of hands associated 
with the giving of the sacred vessels, and the 
power to forgive sins, as a special mark and 
sign of the priesthood. These diverse elements 
have been gathered together at different times, 
without any attempt to mould them into a 
consistent whole. All this is to be kept in 
mind as bearing upon the question of the Re- 
vision of the English Ordinal, and the results ul- 
timately arrived at in the Prayer Book of 1662. 
The thing to which, at this stage of our ar- 
gument, I desire to invite special attention, 
is the practical substitution of a Rite of its 
own, to take the place of the Apostolic and 
universal Rite; and the making of a Roman 
ceremony to be of the essence of the Sacra- 
ment of Order, by declaring that it belonged 
to the matter and form of Ordination. 



II. 

THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

It is beyond all question that the gift con- 
ferred upon the Apostles, when our Lord, 
after His resurrection from the dead, 
'breathed' upon them, was a supernatural 
gift; nor can it for a moment be doubted, 
that in breathing upon them, He intended 
to impart to them, sacramentally of His own 
fulness, and make them thereby partakers 
of His own incarnate life. We must dis- 
criminate here between the gift of inbreath- 
ing, whereby our Lord, as Head of His body 
the Church, brings the Twelve Apostles into 
corporate union with Himself; and the gift of 
the Holy Ghost, bestowed upon the whole 
body of the faithful, assembled with the Apos- 
tles, in one place, in prayer and supplication, 
on the day of Pentecost. " The relation of 
the Paschal to the Pentecostal gift, is the re- 



1 8 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

lation of quickening to endowing. The one 
answers to the power of the resurrection \ and 
the other to the power of the Ascension 
(Godet) ; the one to victory — the other to sov- 
ereignty/' 1 In the original the gift is de- 
scribed as one and not to be repeated. A gift 
made once for all, " not to individuals but to 
the abiding body." The Apostolate, in other 
words, after the Ascension of the Head into 
heaven, is to take the place of Christ Himself 
in the world. As we are accustomed to say in 
legal phrase that '* a corporation never dies," 
but has an existence of its own after the indi- 
viduals composing it shall have passed away; 
so the Apostles, after the resurrection of Jesus 
from the dead, came into the possession of a 
corporate life of which Jesus as the God-man, 
the second Adam, is the Fountain and the 
Source. The Apostolic Ministry, accordingly, 
lives on by virtue of the power of a corporate 
life, after the Twelve have passed away, per- 
petuating in the world, and imparting to 
others, sacramentally, by the laying on of 
hands, the same Spirit by which Jesus was 

1 Westcott, 



THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 1 9 

declared to be the Son of God with power, 
after His resurrection from the dead. 

Now, it is this imparting to others that which 
had been already, in the act of inbreathing, 
received, which makes Ordination in the true 
meaning of the word a sacramental act ; and 
that in three ways more especially: (i) As our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the great Head 
of the Church, took upon Him the form of a ser- 
vant, so He consecrated the service of others, 
done in His Name, to be a sacramental chan- 
nel for keeping alive and perpetuating His own 
Ministry in the world. Charity, in the Chris- 
tian meaning of the word, is something differ- 
ent from philanthropy : not self-glorification, 
but self-abasement is of the essence of a good 
deed done in the Name, and for the sake, of 
Christ. As the Head of the Body, in coming 
into the world, first humbled Himself, that 
He might without offence minister to the poor 
and needy, so the Church in carrying on the 
work of our Lord's Ministry has made provi- 
sion that there shall always be perpetuated an 
order of men " full of the Holy Ghost and wis- 
dom," whose duty it shall be to minister in 



20 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

her behalf to others, in the Spirit of her Lord 
and Master. 

(2) Nor is it only in stooping to save that 
Jesus has set us an example that we should 
walk in His steps. In coming into the world, 
He not only took our flesh upon Him, but He 
placed His own will absolutely at the disposal 
of His Father's will. He gave up that which 
as a Son He had a right, as a matter of justice 
to claim, and He took the place of a slave. 
He became sin for us, died as slaves died, and 
was crucified as a malefactor. He endured 
poverty, hunger, thirst, shame, sorrow, pain, 
desertion, the hiding of His Father's face, and 
the pangs of death. And why ? In order 
that He might constitute Himself to be an 
High Priest, to make intercession to God for 
us. He allowed Himself to be tempted, that 
He might learn how to succour them that are 
tempted. Almighty, yet He put Himself for 
our sakes in our place, that He might make 
the world, with all its load of sin and suffering 
and trial, a divinely appointed sphere where 
a new order of supernatural virtues may be 
called into existence, in which self is willing 



THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 21 

to be made a sacrifice, giving up that which it 
has the right to claim, if there may be created 
thereby another self, strong to bear the weak- 
nesses and infirmities of others, and minister 
comfort to the broken and contrite heart. 
Now it is this mystery of voluntary suffering 
for others' sake that is represented in the sec- 
ond order of the Ministry, one of whose chief 
functions is to absolve the penitent and 
deal tenderly with the broken-hearted. The 
world questions its existence, and pretends 
to doubt its power, and yet it has itself 
acknowledged the virtue of its claims, in the 
saying, ' Fellow-feeling makes us wondrous 
kind!" 

(3) As Joseph, under the Old Testament, was 
taken from prison and from judgment, and 
raised to sit upon a throne, so Jesus, after His 
condemnation by Pontius Pilate, had given to 
Him a name above every name, that at His 
name every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, and things in earth, and things under 
the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father 
(Phil. ii. 8-10). It is this lordship over all 



22 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

things for His body's sake which is the Church, 
that finds sacramental expression in the over- 
seership which gives to the Episcopate the first 
rank in the hierarchy of Order. 

But whatever the variety of administration, 
or the distinction of office, it is the same Holy 
Spirit of the Word Incarnate which makes 
the work of the Ministry in its three-fold order 
of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons effectual for 
the accomplishing of the end for which it was 
created. There is not one kind of grace 
needed for the Diaconate, another for the 
Priesthood, another for the Episcopate. The 
Deacon, in serving the poor, needs quite as 
much the gift of the Holy Spirit that he may 
minister charity in the spirit of his Divine 
Master, as the Bishop in ruling over others 
needs the same grace that he may not play the 
part of " lord over God's heritage " (i Pet. v. 
3). The Priest in absolution needs the same 
grace that he may not only afford relief to the 
conscience, but minister comfort to the heart. 
The specific work to be done is one thing, the 
power by virtue of which the person is to do 
the work, another and a different thing. It is 



THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 21, 

this power which is, sacramentally, conveyed 
in the gift of order. 

The Twelve, as the representatives of the 
twelve tribes of the ancient Israel, were first 
of all separated, and by special training fitted, 
to discharge the duties of the Apostolic Min- 
istry: after the resurrection they were made 
partakers of the same Holy Spirit by virtue of 
which Jesus had been raised again from the 
dead, to enable them to perform the duties 
to which they had been appointed. 

The Church of the living God, accordingly, 
is not in figure, nor in word only, the Body of 
Christ. It is His own Divine creation formed 
by His taking flesh of the Virgin Mary, and 
made to be in His own earthly ministry the 
archetypal germ of all ministry for His name's 
sake. Declared to be the Son of God, with 
power, after His resurrection from the dead, 
the same Jesus has sacramentally incorporated 
Himself with the body which before the resur- 
rection He had formed for Himself, by impart- 
ing to it of His own risen and supernatural life. 
He dwells in it, and acts through it by the 



24 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

power of the Spirit breathed into it, so that 
" the gates of hell cannot prevail against it." 
This is what we mean in the Creed by the pro- 
cession from the Father and the Son. It is 
the same Holy Spirit who at the first by His 
quickening agency gave effect to the Word by 
which the world that then was, began to as- 
sume order and form and beauty, that in the 
new creation after the Word by whom all 
things were made had formed the nucleus of 
the Christian Church out of the remnant of the 
old dispensation, took possession of it, and 
made it to be that which we see it to be in the 
Acts of the Apostles — a living body, quickened 
and animated by the consciousness of an in- 
dwelling supernatural life, working wonders, 
and doing miracles by the power of the Holy 
Ghost. 

If nature, as we call it, be not a congeries of 
atoms, nor a mere system of organic law, but 
as the Greeks long ago believed it to be, a 
living force which in spring-time, and summer, 
and harvest, manifests itself in tree, and 
shrub, and flower, covering the earth with 
beauty, and filling the world with music in 



THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 2$ 

brake, and glade, and forest, why should it be 
thought a thing incredible that the same Spirit 
in a still higher and more glorious order of 
creaturehood, can, by the creative energy of 
the same eternal Logos, put forth in the form 
of a new creature, born again after the image 
of Him that created it, a moral and spiritual 
world of saintliness and self-consecration 
which, in due season, will " make the wilder- 
ness rejoice and blossom as the rose "? 

In the new creation, as in the old, we are 
bound to recognize the power and presence 
of the One in Three, co-operating one with 
another and indissolubly bound together in 
working towards the same end. Deep calleth 
unto deep : Creation to Redemption. As in 
the beginning God the Father, the sphere of 
whose manifestation is the economy of nature, 
brought all things into being through the 
eternal Logos— the archetype and first-born of 
every creature, by the quickening and opera- 
tive agency of the Holy Ghost : so is it also in 
the new creation, in which the Son manifests 
the Father not as power, but as goodness, 
walking the earth in the form of a man. Here 



26 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

too the eternal Logos appears as the sent of 
the Father, whose will He comes to carry into 
effect by calling into being a new order of Son- 
ship, like unto His own, through the operation 
of the Holy Spirit, whose it is in the new 
creation, as in the old, to impart productive 
energy to each living thing, and enable it to 
bring forth fruit after its kind. 

Nor have we yet sounded to its depth the 
mystery of the Sacrament of Order. In the 
everlasting Godhead there is not only a co- 
operation of will, but each person, in addition 
to the relation which he bears to the others, has 
that which is proper to Himself. The Father 
from whom all things proceed manifests Him- 
self in Nature; the Son in Redemption; the 
Holy Ghost in the economy of the Church. 
The third person, equally with the first, and 
the second, has His own sphere, which is 
proper to Himself. It is not by accident that 
we join together in the Creed our confession 
of belief in the Holy Ghost and the Holy 
Catholic Church. Baptism needs to be sup- 
plemented by Confirmation and the laying on of 
hands for the bestowal of the gift of the Holy 



THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER 2J 

Ghost. As in nature it is not enough to re- 
ceive the gift of life and be born into the 
world, but the life needs to be educated and 
trained by the help of teachers and governors 
for the development of the reason and the 
education of the heart; so is it also in the 
economy of grace, it is the work of the Holy 
Spirit, through the Church, to educate and 
train the new life given in Baptism by the 
agency of Pastors, and Teachers, and Govern- 
ors until it advances to perfection. 

Nor does the work of the Holy Ghost end 
with the education and training of the individ- 
ual. It is His work also to carry on in the world 
the work which Christ in His Ministry on earth 
begun. And in doing this He adds that which 
is proper to Himself to the works of the Father 
and the Son. When we read in the New Tes- 
tament that the Holy Ghost was not yet, be- 
cause the Son was not glorified (John vii. 39), 
it is not meant that the Holy Ghost did not 
speak through the Prophets, but that the Holy 
Ghost waited for the entrance of Christ into 
the heavenly places before He undertook, in 
His own proper character, to carry on to its 



28 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 

completion the work which Jesus had begun. 
He waited until the day of Pentecost, and then 
He came like the rushing of a mighty wind, in 
the form of fiery tongues separating them- 
selves, and giving not to the Apostles only, 
but to the whole body of Disciples gathered 
together, power to preach in every language 
the wonderful works of God. This is that 
baptism of fire spoken of by Jesus to His 
Disciples which, in addition to the baptism of 
water, is needed for the cleansing and purifying 
of the Church. The gift of Pentecost is that 
foretold by the prophet Joel (ii. 28, 29) in the 
words, " And it shall come to pass after- 
ward, that I shall pour out my Spirit upon 
all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters 
shall prophesy, your old men shall dream 
dreams, your young men shall see visions. 
And also upon the servants and upon the 
handmaidens in those days will I pour out my 
Spirit." 

We find, accordingly, that in addition to the 
regularly organized Ministry of which Christ 
in His Incarnation was the Archetype, in its 
three grades of Deacon, Priest, and Bishop, 



THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER. 2g 

there appears in the New Testament after the 
day of Pentecost a more widely extended Min- 
istry of Prophets, Teachers, after that miracles, 
then gifts of healing, helps, governments, di- 
versities, tongues (i Cor. xii, 28). This is 
that Ministry of charismatic gifts, peculiar to 
the economy of the Holy Ghost, intended not 
to supplant, but to supplement, the work of 
the organic Ministry; and, as we shall have 
occasion to see, formed the nucleus of the 
Minor Orders which, under one form or an- 
other, both East and West, have existed at 
all times in the Church; and are to be recog- 
nized as a remnant of the Pentecostal gift given 
as a reward of victory to aid in the carrying 
forward the work which Christ in His Minis- 
try on earth had begun. It is worthy of note 
that in the original, where the gift of the Spirit 
after the resurrection by breathing upon the 
Apostles is mentioned, it is without the defin- 
ing article; w T hereas when the Holy Spirit ap- 
pears in His own proper character on the day 
of Pentecost, it is with the article. 

Confirmation and Ordination belong equally 
to the economy of the Holy Spirit: they have 



30 THE SACRAMENT OF ORDER, 

a sacramental character of their own, differing 
from the two great sacraments of the Incarna- 
tion. As Confirmation supplements the rite 
of baptism by the superadded gift of the Holy 
Spirit to educate and train, through the agency 
of the Church, the life given in Baptism, so in 
Ordination, the Holy Spirit is given to carry 
on and complete the Ministry of Christ as 
Prophet, Priest, and King by the bestowal of 
the whole fulness of the Godhead to quicken, 
not only the organic Ministry to do its ap- 
pointed work, but to sanctify the natural gifts 
of the whole body of the faithful, to aid in the 
extension of the Kingdom of heaven in the 
world. 



III. 

THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

The Diaconate. 

The growth and development of the Chris 
tian Ministry, from the original stem of the 
Apostolate, furnishes us with a good illustra- 
tion of the difference between the logical and 
chronological order of ideas. It will be ob- 
served, then, that the chronological order of 
the Ministry is in the inverse ratio of its logical 
order. It has always been a vexed question, 
whether the seven men first set apart by the 
Apostles to the work of the Ministry were 
Deacons, in the later and technical meaning of 
the word. The answer to the question is that 
names have at first a general, afterwards a 
technical meaning, when differentiation takes 
place. 1 The mistake made is in thinking that 

1 " The sum of the matter is are formed, new words are not 
this : Though new institutions coined for them, but old ones 



32 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 



the Church in its development moved along 
the lines of some previously devised scheme or 
plan, given by its Divine founder, and not, ac- 
cording to the law of all other organic bodies, 
by way of growth and development, under 
the conditions of time and experience. The 
primitive Church had thrown upon it — one 
could wish the same were true of the Church 



borrowed and applied. Erfi- 
6H07to$, whose general idea is 
overseer, was a word in use 
long before Christianity ; a 
word of universal relation to 
economical, civil, military, 
naval, judicial and religious 
matters. This word was as- 
sumed to denote the govern- 
ing and presiding persons of 
the Church, as AkxkovoS (an- 
other word of vulgar and dif- 
fused use) to denote the minis- 
terial. 

" The Presbyters therefore, 
while the Apostles lived, were 
'EititiKortoi, overseers. But 
the Apostles in foresight of 
their approaching martyrdom 
having selected and appointed 
their successors in the several 
cities and communities as S. 
Paul did Timothy at Ephesus, 
and Titus at Crete, a.d. 64, 



four years before his death ; 
their modesty, as it seems, 
made them refuse it : they 
would keep that name proper 
and sacred to the first extraor- 
dinary messengers of Christ, 
though they really succeeded 
them in their office, in due 
part and measure, as the 
ordinary governors of the 
Churches. 

" It was agreed, therefore, 
over all Christendom at once, 
in the very next generation, 
after the Apostles, to assign 
and appropriate to them the 
word 'E7ti6KQ7toS, or Bishop. 
From that time to this that 
appellation, which before in- 
cluded a Presbyter, has been 
restrained to a superior order." 
Bentley, Remarks upon a late 
Discourse of Freethinking, 
pp. 136, 137. 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 33 

now — the distribution of money, and the care 
of temporal affairs in providing for the flock, to 
an extent far beyond anything we have any 
conception of at the present time. It was the 
custom then — one could wish it were the cus- 
tom now — for rich men to bring thek money 
and lay it at the Apostles' feet. Under the 
distress of the times, occasioned by the pass- 
ing away of the elder economy, men began to 
realize in a living way that there is such a 
thing as laying up " treasure in heaven/' If, 
as the prophet says, there is " a bag with 
holes," as many a man who puts his money 
away in a bank, instead of spending it in good 
works, before being called to his account, is 
now-a-days finding out to his cost, so the 
Christians of the Apostolic age found that the 
best thing to do with money is to give it to 
the poor and needy, and so lay up treasure in 
heaven. The Apostles, oppressed by the tem- 
poral burdens they were called upon to bear, 
determined, accordingly, to create an order of 
men, noted for their honesty and good sense, 
and capacity for wise administration, in order 
that they might have more time to give to the 



34 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

care of the worship of the Church, and the 
ministration of the Word : i. e., to the adapta- 
tion of the Word, under the form of Creed, and 
Gospel, and Catechetical Instruction, to the 
needs of the growing Church. But this separa- 
tion of the Diaconate as a Ministry of serving, 
did not exclude the seven from preaching and 
baptizing, as in the case of Philip the Evan- 
gelist. The Deacons, when the time comes 
for them to be recognized as an Order, appear 
as attendants upon Bishops, and helpers in 
matters of administration. 

The Diaconate of the early Church was, as 
an Order, of far more account than it is at 
present, in any part of the Church, East or 
West. In Rome, the Deacon had the over- 
sight of the ecclesiastical divisions of the city, 
and was the recognized man of affairs in con- 
nection with the temporalities of the Church. 
Next to the Bishop himself, he was the most 
influential man in the city of Rome. When 
Gregory the Great was made a Deacon, he was 
sent to Constantinople, in the character of a 
plenipotentiary or representative (apocrisia- 
rius) y by Benedict I. Pelagius II. uses him 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 35 

afterwards in the same capacity, when he wants 
to urge the Emperor to send help to Rome 
against the Lombards, both in money and men, 
since the Exarch at Ravenna had become pow- 
erless to assist. We see the same thing at 
Alexandria, in the time of John the Almoner. 
The Church had a fleet of ships which provided 
corn for the poor and the desolate cast upon 
her care. There were not less than a hundred 
Deacons constantly employed in connection 
with the Cathedral Church ; they had, all the 
time, more than enough to do in the work of 
ministration. The number seven marked the 
Diaconate as in an especial sense the Ministry 
of the Holy Ghost, through whose agency the 
Church made her light shine before the world, 
in relieving the necessities of the poor, and 
ministering comfort to the widow and the 
orphan ; and the Deacons did all this, not in 
the form of benefactors or patrons, dispensing 
in a lofty way their dole of charity, but as 
consecrated persons anointed by the Holy 
Ghost to do in the form of servants, as their 
Lord and Master did it before them, to the 
sick and needy members of His Body the 



$6 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

Church. It was Christ's hands which, in an 
order of men created for that very purpose, 
ministered to the wants of a world suffering 
from famine, and pestilence, and war. 1 

1 The form for making a who use this office well pur- 
Deacon in the Greek Church chase to themselves a good de- 
expresses all this and more, in gree ; and make Thy servant 
the prayer which precedes and perfect. For Thine is the 
closes the act of Imposition of Kingdom," etc. 
Hands. The Bishop laying Then" The Ectene being fin- 
his hand on the head of the ished, the Bishop lays his hand 
new-ordained saith this pray- upon the head of the new-or- 
er : " O Lord our God, who dained and saith this prayer 
in thy prescience dost pour out in a low voice : O God our 
the abundance of Thy Holy Saviour, who by Thine ever- 
Spirit upon those whom Thou lasting Word didst appoint 
dost set apart by Thine inscru- the order of Deacons to the 
table power for Thy Minis- Apostles, and didst call Thy 
try, and to wait on Thy spot- proto-martyr Stephen to be 
less mysteries; preserve in all the first to fulfil the office of 
things honest him whom Thou a Deacon, as it is written in 
hast now been pleased to pro- Thy Holy Gospel ; if any de- 
mote by me to the office of a sire to be chief among you let 
Deacon ; that he may hold the him be your Minister. Grant, 
mystery of the faith in a pure O Lord, to this Thy servant, 
conscience. Give him the whom Thou hast been pleased 
grace which Thou didst im- to appoint to this Ministry, 
part to the proto-martyr the aid of Thy holy and life- 
Stephen first called by Thee giving Spirit ; and replenish 
to this work of the Ministry ; him with faith and charity, 
and grant him to fulfil this with virtue and holiness ; for 
office vouchsafed unto him by not by the imposition of my 
Thy goodness according to hands, but by the abundance 
Thy good pleasure ; for they of Thy mercies is grace vouch- 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 37 



The Priesthood. 

We have seen that, when the needs of the 
Church required it, the Apostles transferred to 
others that which, at the first, had been con- 
centrated in their own persons. In so doing, 
they did not create new offices, but shared with 
select persons that which they had hitherto 
exclusively possessed. As they had already, 
to meet a pressing necessity, set apart " hon- 
est men of good report " to attend to the dis- 
tribution of the money which had been placed 

safed unto those who are and saith in a loud voice 

worthy of Thee. Grant there- worthy; then those within 

fore that he being freed from the Altar sing worthy thrice ; 

all sin may stand unblamably and each chorus repeats worthy 

before Thee, and obtain Thy thrice. Then the Bishop gives 

promised reward, for," etc. him the Epimanikia (or 

I shall add the Rubric with sleeves) and saith worthy ; 

which the service is brought which is sung in the same 

to a conclusion for the purpose manner as before by those 

of illustrating in a practical within the Altar, and by the 

way the difference between the choruses without. The Bish- 

Ritual Act consisting of the op then gives him the fan and 

laying on of hands and prayer, saith, worthy ; which is again 

and the ceremonial accessories repeated as before. After 

to the Act. '''After Amen, which he kisses the Bishop's 

The Bishop taking the Orarion shoulders and waiteth at the 

puts it on his left shoulder, Holy Table." 



38 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

in their charge, to provide for the wants of 
the poor and suffering; so when the time came 
for the multitude of disciples to be gathered 
into separate congregations, the Apostles gave 
to men known to rule their own households 
well, a share in the power which they had 
reserved to themselves of attending to " the 
prayers " and " the ministry of the word/' 

The first mention made of a localized 
Ministry is in Acts xi. 30, where the Elders at 
Jerusalem are mentioned as receiving, at the 
hands of Barnabas and Saul, the money sent 
from Antioch for the relief of the famine which 
at that time prevailed in Judea. Some time 
after, when the same two Apostles set out 
on their missionary journey throughout Asia 
Minor, they followed the example of Jerusalem 
and " ordained them elders in every Church ' 
(Acts xiv. 23). It would appear to have been 
the uniform practice of the Apostles at this 
time wherever they found any number of con- 
verts congregated together, to appoint Elders 
to take the oversight of the flock, still holding 
in their own hands the care of the churches 
they had planted. Thus S. Paul sends for the 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 39 

Presbyters of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus, 
and exhorts them to feed the flock over which 
the Holy Ghost had made them overseers. It 
is not until after the year 64 that we find 
Presbyters and Deacons recognized, as distinct 
orders in Philippians and the Pastoral Epistles, 
This was the second step towards permanent 
Church organization. 

The Apostles, while they lived, watched 
over the churches which they had established. 
The Episcopate still slept in the Apostolate. 
James, on account of his blood relationship to 
our Lord, was acknowledged as head of the 
Church at Jerusalem. S. Paul before he is 
taken away delegates to Timothy at Ephesus, 
and to Titus at Crete, authority over the 
churches there. Titus is left at Crete to or- 
dain Elders (Tit. i. 5), and Timothy is told to 
lay hands suddenly on no man. He is not 
to be hasty to receive accusations against an 
Elder; mindful of his youth, he is not to 
rebuke an Elder, but to entreat him as a father 
(1 Tim, vi. 1). The Apostolic delegate has 
begun to assume the function of a Bishop in 
the technical meaning of the word. 



40 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

From this time forth the chronological order 
gives place to the logical order of Bishops, 
Priests, and Deacons. The conclusion reached, 
I shall take the liberty of stating in the words 
of another: 

" Until Christ gave commission to His Apos- 
tles to go forth and to teach, and to gather 
into His Church from ' all nations ' and lan- 
guages, and peoples, He continued in His own 
person all the offices of that Church, without 
any to partake with Him in the Ministry, the 
Priesthood, or the overseership. He was the 
' Bishop ' of all souls in that Church, from 
whom all Bishops derive their office of rulers. 
He was the great High Priest, the typical and 
germinal Priest of His Church, from whom 
every Priest derives his office. He was the 
Deacon of His Church, who came for this very 
end, to be the Deacon or Minister of the 
Church; that is, He came not to be ministered 
unto — for none could minister unless they de- 
rived power from Him — but He came to min- 
ister and to give this Ministry as He gave His 
life for others, since He came as much to minis- 
ter as to ransom. He thus not so much cen- 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 4 1 

tered in His own person the whole official life 
of the Church as He was the essential life itself, 
the source from which the official life of the 
Church springs, for He did not gather up life 
into His own person, but He was the light and 
life in the concrete. He then is not only 
the ' chief ' corner-stone, the protection of the 
Church, He is its one foundation stone, Bish- 
op, Priest and Deacon : And when He breathed 
on His Apostles and sent them forth in His 
Name, He gave them the power to be the 
outward presentment of Himself. When the 
needs of the Church required it His Apostles 
did not create new offices, but they gave up a 
portion of that which they had hitherto exclu- 
sively possessed, and which was concentrated in 
their own persons. That they might no longer 
be distracted from their higher duities by the 
necessity of serving tables, but might give 
themselves up to the oversight of the flock, 
they conferred on chosen men the power which 
they themselves possessed of ministering to 
that flock. When the growth of the Church 
demanded it, they gave to others a share in the 
office of Priests of Christ's Church, By ordi- 



42 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTR Y. 

nation and the laying on of hands, they con- 
ferred this power. But no one can confer that 
which he does not himself possess. The 
means, moreover, by which that power is con- 
ferred, the stretching, the laying on of hands, 
is also symbolical of the reality of the gift of 
which the Giver has the whole in His own 
power, and which he therefore is able to give 
to others ; not that the higher has power to 
confer the lower because it is lower, but be- 
cause he himself possesses that lower office 
.which he confers. The Apostles therefore 
continued to be that which their Lord had be- 
come; that which He had made them to be, 
the Deacons of His flock, the Priests of His 
Church, the Bishops of His people; conferring 
indeed on others, yet, without stripping them- 
selves of any ministerial grace, or creating any 
higher office in order to supply the defects of 
the lower. In a word the Church was * de- 
veloped not from below but from above/ 
Nay, more, the three-fold Ministry embodies, 
and sets forth visibly before the eyes of men, 
the unseen mystery of the eternal Three in 

1 Denton on the Acts of the Apostles, pp. ci, cii. 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTR Y. 43 

their work for the salvation of men : the eternal 
Father, the fountain of jurisdiction in the send- 
ing of the Son, has his representative in the 
Bishop who still remains the foundation of ju- 
risdiction in the Church ; the eternal Son, who 
in the offering of His Body constituted Him- 
self a Priest for men, has His counterpart in 
the Priest who serves the altar, and has power 
to pardon the penitent; the Holy Ghost, who 
proceedeth from the Father and the Son, is 
manifested in the seven-fold Diaconate, whose 
work it is to bestow gifts, and so make the 
light of the Gospel shine throughout the world, 
that men may be led to glorify their Father 
which is in Heaven. 

The Episcopate. 

The question whether the Bishopric is to be 

accounted a third order of the Ministry, or is 
to be reckoned only as a different grade of the 
Priesthood, is in reality a figment of the schools, 
the answer to which depends entirely upon the 
point of view from which we approach the 
consideration of the subject. It is beyond all 



44 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

dispute that, in the order of the hierarchy, the 
Bishop ranks only as a Priest of a higher grade ; 
but in the sacrament of order, on the other 
hand, we have not to do, only or chiefly, with 
the order of the Priesthood, but with the per- 
petuation of our Lord's own Ministry in all the 
plenitude of its powers, to the end of time. 
The subject in hand is not the abstract ques- 
tion of what constitutes the sacerdotium, or the 
relation which Priest and Bishop bear each to 
the other as Priests; but the concrete question 
of the Apostolate, as the divinely appointed 
channel for the transmission of the grace, which 
flows through the work and ministry of the 
incarnate Lord as the sent of God for the sal- 
vation of the world. From the point of view 
of the perpetuation of the succession of the 
Ministry, it remains true that the Episcopal 
order is not a higher grade of the second order, 
but is the first or chief order, through which 
the other two orders of the Ministry are to be 
perpetuated. The Episcopate accordingly has 
an indelible character of its own, not given to 
either the Diaconate or to the Presbyterate. 
It belongs to the order of Bishops to perpetu- 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 45 

ate the succession of the Ministry, and with it 
the authority to rule : to the Presbyter belongs 
neither the power to ordain nor has he jure 
divino, an inherent right to govern, but is to 
obey his Bishop as " sent of the Father." If 
we may, without intruding into things beyond 
our mortal ken, be allowed so to speak, we may 
venture to say that the Episcopate, as contain- 
ing all the other orders within itself, is the rep- 
resentative of the principle of the moral unity 
which binds the three orders of the Ministry 
together, even as the eternal Father is the 
representative of the unity of the everlasting 
Godhead. He is the source from which the 
Godhead of the Son originates by way of gener- 
ation, as that of the Holy Ghost by way of pro- 
cession. It is this aspect of the Episcopate as 
the representative of the principle of moral 
unity, which appears in the Ignatian Epistles. 

If, then, there be anything of a sacramental 
nature in the three orders of the Ministry es- 
tablished by the Apostles, and acknowledged 
before the close of the second century by the 
whole Church throughout the world — by what 



46 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

right, it is fair to ask, does the Roman Church 
take upon itself to invalidate the authority of 
the Episcopate by turning it into a grade 
of the Priesthood, and substituting in its place 
the Sub-diaconate which, until the time of 
Innocent III., had never been recognized as an 
order of Ministry in the sacramental meaning 
of the word ? It is a question which I shall 
leave others to answer, whether the Latin 
Church, by its introduction of a grade of Min- 
istry which does not properly belong to the 
three orders ordered by Christ and His 
Apostles into the hierarchy of order, has not 
laid itself open to the charge of breach of trust 
of the most serious kind. Nor is it difficult to 
see how the innovation, gradually, but surely 
came about. 

It will be found upon examination that, as 
the result of the teaching of the Schoolmen, 
a new order of Ministry silently sprung up 
alongside the three orders of the Apostolate 
during the Middle Ages. It became the cus- 
tom, after the ceremonial of the Mass received 
additions in order to give greater dignity to 
the rite, for the celebrant to be assisted by 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 47 

two clerks, known respectively as Deacon and 
Sub-deacon, performing different functions of 
a higher and lower grade. 1 While the Church 
of England preserving the Apostolic tradi- 
tion knows only one degree below the Priest- 
hood, " the order of Deacons," the Roman 
Communion recognizes two major orders infe- 
rior to Priests — Deacons and Sub-deacons — the 
four minor orders of Exorcist, Reader, Acolyte, 
and Janitor being placed in a different grade. 
By the introduction of the Sub-diaconate, after 
the Council of Beneventum in 1091, into the 
hierarchy of order, and its recognition by 
Innocent the Third, there was thus created a 
triple Ministry of worship, which soon de- 
manded recognition as of Divine institution, 
not less than the three-fold order of the Min- 
istry established by the Apostles themselves. 
We have now found out the solution of the 
addition to the ordinal, made at this time in 
the West. Why should there be a double 
laying on of hands in the Roman rite differ- 
ent from the Greek rite, and from the Anglo- 
Saxon rite, up to the twelfth century ? How 

1 Eager, The Christian Ministry in the New Testament, ch. \v. 



48 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

can the same person be, at the same time, an 
ordinatus and an ordinandus? What reason 
can be given for regarding the Apostolic rite 
of laying on of hands and the invocation of the 
Holy Ghost which takes place in the early part 
of the rite, incomplete, until the newly in- 
vented ceremony of the " Porrectio " has taken 
place, and the additional power given to offer 
Masses for the living and dead, with a new in- 
vocation and a new laying on of hands, have 
taken effect ? If we consult Roman authori- 
ties we find that S. Bonaventura, Morinus, 
Goar, Tournely, Perrone are of the opinion 
that the essential matter and form of the Rite 
consists in the imposition of hands and the 
invocation ; Capreolus, Vasques, Dominicus 
Soto, Gonet maintain with Eugenius IV. that 
the essential matter and form are to be found 
in the delivery of the instruments, and the 
accompanying form with the laying on of 
hands ; Bellarmine holds to the theory of a 
" double partial matter " and a " double partial 
form/' The whole subject is discussed by 
the learned Dominican Billuart in his Cursus 
Theologice juxta Mentem D. Thomce (1746- 



THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 49 

51), who, after stating the various opinions 
held by men of repute, arrives at the conclu- 
sion that, since in Confirmation and the Sacra- 
ment of Order Christ gave no specific direction 
as to the matter and form of the Sacrament, 
He left it open to the Greek Church to adopt 
one form of Ordination, and the Latin Church 
another (sic), as they might think reasonable 
and find most expedient (vol. Ill, Trac. de 
Sac. Ord., diss, ii, art. 1). 

But there is another and a better answer, 
based not upon theory but fact. There grew 
up in connection with the scholastic doctrine 
of the Priesthood and the Sacrament of the 
Altar an entirely new order of Ministry, which, 
insensibly to the actors themselves, increased 
in importance until it took the place in the 
popular mind of the hierarchy of order, as 
previously established by Apostolic authority. 
It grew in popular estimation by being contin- 
ually kept before the eyes of the people in every 
parish Church ; and by the introduction of the 

Porrectio ' into the ordinal, it secured at 

length from Eugenius IV. the recognition of 

a popular ceremony; not as a symbol of in- 
4 



50 THE THREE ORDERS OF THE MINISTRY. 

duction into office according to its original 
intent, but as of the very essence of the Rite. 
To make the process of the substitution of 
the new invention of the Schoolmen for the 
original function of the Apostles complete, it 
was necessary to provide that there should be 
another imposition of hands and another act 
of invocation before the ordination should be 
regarded as a fait accompli. 

It will be observed that we have in the ac- 
complishing of all this both a violation of 
fundamental principles, and a setting aside of 
well-established rules of order. The Sub-diac- 
onate now made part and parcel of the higher 
orders of the Ministry, for the first time in the 
twelfth century, takes the place vacated by the 
Episcopate under the scholastic theory of 
orders : and to what end ? To make way for 
putting in its place one invested with absolute 
power, who to complete the confusion is not 
able, as not included in the organic Ministry, 
to transmit to others the office which he has 
himself usurped, except through the Episco- 
pate which he was created to destroy. 



IV. 

THE MINOR ORDERS. 

The Minor orders of the early Church were 
a survival of the Pentecostal Gift. There was 
a difference, from the very first, between the 
organic Ministry transmitted by the laying on 
of hands, and a more widely extended minis- 
try of Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Helps of 
many kinds, each, according to their several 
ability, contributing his gift towards the edi- 
fication of the Church. The organic Minis- 
try, as we have seen, took the place of our 
Lord Himself in His threefold capacity of 
Prophet, Priest, and King. But in addition to 
the gift of the Spirit received by inbreathing, 
and as formative principle transmitted through 
the channel of the organic Ministry, the 
Church on the day of Pentecost received the 
Gift of the Holy Spirit, not as an indwelling 
principle of organic life, but in the form of 



5 2 THE MINOR ORDERS, 

charismatic gifts bestowed upon the whole 
body of believers, and distributed to each 
member of the body according to his ability to 
receive. It is a mistake to imagine that these 
charismatic gifts ceased with the Pentecostal 
Age. They still continued, under another 
form, in all lay persons who formally conse- 
crated their gifts to the service of God and 
His Church, in preference to wasting them in 
secular occupations for the sake of worldly 
gain. They were recognized by the whole 
Church under the name of the Minor Orders 
of the Ministry. 

It is due to the Roman Church to say she 
took the lead, in the third century, in organiz- 
ing these relics of the Pentecostal Age into an 
effective and closely combined order of the 
second rank. It is, as Harnack in his late 
valuable essay on the Sources of the Apostolic 
Canons does not hesitate to say, " a striking 
witness of the way in which the Roman Church 
understood how to overcome the dangers 
which still always threatened her from a dead 
organization of the Church, to build up her 



THE MINOR ORDERS. 53 

episcopal-presbyterian constitution/ ' and to 
adopt the religious and civil elements of Ro- 
man life. The Church created thereby a nurs- 
ery for the higher order of Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons, and out of the perishing remnants 
of the Pentecostal Age formed a training 
school for the Ministry of the most valuable 
kind. One has only to think of the modern 
Sexton (" the maker of the dead man's bed ") 
combining, in addition to his lucrative employ- 
ment of undertaker, the whole five grades of 
the lower orders of the Ministry; or the parish 
choir, made up of opera singers and strolling 
theatrical performers, not to wish that the 
services of the Minor orders of Ministry in the 
Church were again in the hands of persons 
who had some marks of consecration for their 
office. 

Fabian, in the middle of the third century, 
was the first of the Roman Bishops, Har- 
nack tells us, to break with the Pentecostal 
idea of the number seven as representing the 
economy of the Holy Ghost; but he did this 
in a way not to shock the traditional feeling 
of the Church. Instead of creating fourteen 



54 THE MINOR ORDERS. 

Deacons to attend to the fourteen divisions 
of the city, he appointed seven sub-deacons to 
assist the seven Deacons, and so " in deference 
to Holy Scripture the number seven was not 
increased/ ' 

The effect of this change, adopted at the first 
for the purpose of convenience, and wisely so, 
was not at the time foreseen. It resulted, as 
we have seen in the previous chapter, in the 
taking of the sub-diaconate out of the grade 
of the lower orders where it had formerly stood, 
and where it still remains in the Greek Church, 
arid made it to be a stepping-stone to the 
higher orders of the Hierarchy. 

For this Innocent III., and not Fabian, 
was to blame, but it points a moral to which 
I desire to call attention at this stage of our 
inquiry. To say that the Latin Church pos- 
sesses in a peculiar degree, above either the 
Greek Church or the old British Church, the 
secret of organization is only to say that she 
inherits the great gift of the Roman people; 
but while the gift of order is in itself a most 
admirable thing, its virtue depends on the 
use that is made of it, and whether, in mat- 



THE MINOR ORDERS. 55 

ters affecting the order and ritual of the 
Church, it be of God's making or of man's 
making. When it is proposed, as we have 
seen it proposed in the last chapter, to sub- 
stitute a theory of the Schoolmen for the 
teaching of Holy Scripture and the witness 
of the primitive Church, on the subject of the 
Episcopate; when the attempt is made to 
foist into the ordinal, with the view of giving 
practical effect to the substitution of the order 
of worship for the hierarchy of order, a cere- 
mony which had no place there for a thousand 
years; when an order which, according to the 
Statuta Ecclesice Antiqua, has never received 
imposition of hands, is given a place in the 
hierarchy of order, to countenance the notion 
that the Episcopate is not an order with an 
indelible character of its own; when, as a con- 
sequence of these things, confusion and inter- 
mixture are introduced into the ordinal so 
that the wit of man cannot any longer dis- 
cover where the act of ordination properly 
begins or ends — can it be questioned that 
the time had come for the Episcopate, as an 
order, to stand upon the defensive, and for the 



56 THE MINOR ORDERS. 

attempt to be made to restore the ordinal 
again to something like its original harmony 
and unity of idea ? 

Things had come to such a pass that it had 
ceased to be a question about Rites and Cere- 
monies. It was a contention for the original 
constitution of the Church and the Faith once 
delivered to the Saints. Fortunately we pos- 
sess in the Apostolical Constitutions and the 
Statuta Ecclesice Antiqua the rule of the Church, 
East and West, at the close of the fourth cen- 
tury, both as defining the relative position of 
the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Dea- 
cons, and the exclusion of the Sub-diaconate 
from the hierarchy of order. The rule for the 
Western Church as laid down in the ancient 
collection of Canons, known as the Statuta 
Ecclesice Antiqua, is as follows: — 

First. When a Bishop is ordained, let two 
Bishops lay and hold the Book of the Gospels 
upon his head and neck, and one saying the 
blessing over him, let the other Bishops who 
are present touch his head. (Can. II.) 

Second. When a Presbyter is ordained, while 
the Bishop is blessing him and holding his 



THE MINOR ORDERS. 57 

hand upon his head, all the Presbyters shall 
hold their hands in conjunction with the hand 
of the Bishop on his head. (Can. III.) 

Third. When a Deacon is ordained, let the 
Bishop who blesses him alone put his hand 
upon his head, because he is set apart (conse- 
cratur) not to the Priesthood, but to the office 
of the Ministry. (Can. IV.) 

Fourth. When a Sub-deacon is ordained, in- 
asmuch as he does not receive imposition of 
hands, let him receive from the hands of the 
Bishop the empty paten and the empty chal- 
ice; moreover, let him receive from the hand 
of the Archdeacon a Ewer (urceolus), the 
Mantile, 1 and the Manutergium. (Can. V.) 

Now, these Canons prove indisputably that 
the law r of the Western Church at the close of 
the fourth century recognizes (i) the existence 
of three orders, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, 
as constituting the hierarchy of order; (2) they 
bear witness to the fact that the laying on of 
hands accompanied by the invocation of the 

1 On the reading here see Maskell's note in his Monu- 
Hefele, History of the Coun- menta Ritualia, vol. Ill, p. 
cils, vol. II, p. 411 ; and 183. 



58 THE MINOR ORDERS. 

Holy Ghost . was the sacramental channel 
through which these higher orders were trans- 
mitted ; (3) they place the Sub-diaconate 
among the Minor or lower orders on the 
ground that it does not receive imposition of 
hands, but is inducted by the presentation of 
the paten and chalice; thus making a difference 
between the Ritual act (properly so called) 
as of the essence of the rite, and the Cere- 
monial act of induction to a special duty, not 
regarded as an official act. 

By what authority was the Sub-diaconate 
taken out of the category of the lower orders 
of the Ministry, and elevated by Innocent III. 
into the hierarchy of order ? It was an innova- 
tion, but an innovation with a purpose. It 
moved the Priesthood up a step, and placed it 
in the first grade ; the Deacon appears not as 
the minister of the Bishop, but as associated 
with a subordinate, who is to assist him in 
waiting upon the Priest. In other words, to 
carry out the Scholastic idea of the Priesthood 
as supreme, the order of worship consisting of 
Priest, Deacon, and Sub-deacon is substituted 
for the Apostolic Ministry of Bishops, Priests, 



THE MINOR ORDERS. 59 

and Deacons. The Revolution is complete. 
Let us now see the result as it affects the dis- 
cipline and lives of the Clergy in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries. 

The most enthusiastic admirer of the Middle 
Ages cannot ignore the decline which took 
place in the Western Church, in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries. It is marked by the neg- 
lect of preaching on the part of the Priesthood, 
and the growth of the temporal power of the 
Papacy, culminating in the Babylonian exile 
and the Great Schism. Lucius III., and the 
Council of Verona (1184), resisted the attempt 
made by Peter Waldo (11 79) to establish an 
order of poor preachers ; and invoked the aid 
of the secular arm to put down by force the 
growing spirit of reform. The Dominicans 
and Franciscans undertook the work of revival. 
Grosstete, in England, bewails the secularized 
condition of the Clergy; and calls to his aid 
the preaching friars to instruct the poor and 
ignorant. 

With the preaching friars and their work 
there is no fault to find ; but whatever their 



60 THE MINOR ORDERS. 

value, it remains true that they were a human 
invention utilized by the Papacy, now advanc- 
ing into power over the legitimate claims of 
the Episcopate, to do the work which properly 
belonged to the organic ministry of the Church. 
It is at this time the conflict between the 
Seculars and the Regulars, with its shameful 
consequences, begins to run its course. The 
Church is like a household divided against 
itself. The Monks are allowed to take the 
place of the parish clergy; they hear confes- 
sions and preach indulgences. Abbots begin 
to assume the mitre, and confront the Bishops 
everywhere, denying their claims to jurisdic- 
tion. The struggle for precedence enters the 
Universities, where the Popes take the side of 
the Monks against the regularly constituted 
authorities. It was the Dominicans who were 
chiefly responsible for the crusade against the 
Albigenses. The spirit of the Revolution 
which had begun in the substitution of the 
Priesthood for the Episcopate, and the placing 
of the Minor order of the Sub-diaconate on 
the same footing as the three regular orders 
of the Ministry, now reveals itself in the com- 



THE MINOR ORDERS. 6 1 

bination between Innocent the Third urged on 
by the Dominicans, and Simon de Montfort 
to destroy by force the one institution of the 
Middle Ages to which we owe all that is 
noblest and best in modern society — the insti- 
tution of chivalry. 

What Innocent, by the aid of the Domini- 
cans and the secular arm accomplished in 
southern France, he attempted to do in Eng- 
land. He took sides with the King to nullify 
the effect of the declaration of rights in the 
Magna Charta, the great bulwark of English 
liberty. Nor did the spirit of the Revolution 
end here. It sought foreign fields of conquest. 
Unable to get the Eastern Church to surrender 
its legitimate claims, Innocent joined with the 
Crusaders to drive the Greek Metropolitans 
from their thrones, and lent the aid of the 
Church in the West to found the Latin Empire 
of Constantinople, when a drunken soldiery 
made a harlot entertain them by rehearsing 
ribald songs, and performing indecent dances, 
before the high altar of S. Sophia; and a 
Venetian Patriarch was appointed Patriarch of 
Constantinople. 



62 THE MINOR ORDERS. 



Abroad and at home, piracy and plunder 
followed in the footsteps of the Revolution. 
Honorius III. (1216-1227), the successor of 
Innocent III., claimed the right of presenta- 
tion to two prebendal stalls in every Cathedral 
in England. Gregory IX. (123 1) forbade the 
Bishops to appoint to English benefices until 
he had made provision for the Roman See. 
The Bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln were 
ordered to find benefices for three hundred 
foreigners, not able to speak a word of the 
English tongue. When Grosstete refused to 
be made the tool of Innocent IV. by promot- 
ing his nephew to a canonry in Lincoln, and 
took occasion to remind the Pope that i( no 
sin can be more adverse to the doctrine of the 
Apostles, more abominable to Jesus Christ, or 
more hurtful to mankind than to defraud and 
rob those souls which ought to be the object 
of the pastoral care and instruction, which by 
the Scriptures they ought to enjoy," he was 
laughed at for his pains, and consigned to 
obscurity for the rest of his life. 

The only deliverance which the Church of 
England could hope for to free her from the 



THE MINOR ORDERS. 63 

far-reaching Revolution, which had overthrown 
the legitimate authority of the Episcopate 
throughout the world, was to go to the root 
of the evil and demand that the ordinal should 
be revised, and restored to its original condi- 
tion, by virtue of which the constitution of the 
Church, in the three orders of the Ministry as 
established by the Apostles, should be recog- 
nized, the mediaeval patch of the " Porrectio ' 
taken out of the way, and this we shall find, 
in dealing with the revision of the ordinal, she 
before long proceeded to do. 



V. 

THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 

AMONG the things which the nation and peo- 
ple of England find it hard to understand 
is the art of deception. Blunt to a fault, 
the Englishman despises finesse, diplomacy, 
double-dealing — anything and everything that 
is open to the charge of trickery or de- 
ceit. It is for this reason that he loathes a 
Jesuit, and regards with disfavour the writings 
of Liguori and his satellites. He is accus- 
tomed to think of casuistry as falsehood made 
a fine art ; and has his doubts about the- con- 
fessional as anything more than medicine 
for sick people; not intended to be taken 
at all times, as a steady diet. It may be 
that the English allow their prejudices, in 
favour of honesty and truth, to run away with 
them ; and do not make allowance, as they 
should, for the moral obliquity which, to a 



THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 65 

greater or less degree, seems to be characteris- 
tic of the Celtic and Italian races, leading them 
occasionally to try their hands at steering 
their way between downright falsehood and 
inventing the truth. 

It is this prepossession in favour of fair 
dealing, especially in matters of religion, which 
makes it difficult for the English mind to take 
in what is meant by " intention/' It is a 
word that does not properly belong to the 
Saxon tongue, and is of the nature of an 
importation from a foreign source. It is 
difficult to imagine that anybody should, in 
religion, say or do anything that he did not 
really intend to do or say. We can understand 
how abroad, and especially at Rome, that the 
insinuation of doing, in religion, what would be 
regarded as an evasion unworthy of a gentle- 
man in the affairs of ordinary life, is not made 
with the intention of giving offence, but is said 
in good faith, as something recognized by the 
Church of Rome in dealing with her own 
children. As it is a matter of contention 

among ultramontanists themselves whether the 
5 



66 THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 

oracle of the Vatican gives its response in ac- 
cordance with facts as they are presented to 
it, or utters its voice from the depth of its 
own inner consciousness, we shall in this case 
give it the benefit of a doubt, and conclude 
that it is not, after all, the voice of Leo XIII., 
but an echo from a nearer shore, that is re- 
sponsible for the utterance evidently based 
upon an entire misconception of the " inten- 
tion " of the framers of the English ordinal. 

Whatever be the strained interpretation of 
the doctrine of 'intention' to be found in 
casuistical writers of the Liguorian type, it 
never could have been the mind of the Catholic 
Church to lay down, as a principle, that the 
validity of a sacramental rite can ever be held 
to depend upon the meaning which the ad- 
ministrator reads into his own act; provided 
he duly performs, according to the mind of the 
Church, the function which, as her Minister, he 
has been empowered to fulfil. There are cases 
where the Early Church might seem to have 
strained a point in upholding the doctrine 
that the grace of the sacrament depends upon 
the intention of the Minister of the rite, as in 



THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 6y 

the matter (if it be true) of Athanasius, playing 
at baptism when he was a boy. No one imag- 
ines for a moment that the mock rites of 
Michael the Dipsomaniac, in his drunken re- 
vels in Constantinople, were valid ordinations. 
Nor can it be granted that any ordinations, 
outside of the Sacrament of order, are valid 
any more than in any other Sacramental rite 
where there is neither proper matter nor 
proper form. But if there be both matter and 
form — the old Nag's head fable being put 
out of court as no longer tenable — then, to 
challenge the validity of Anglican orders on 
the ground of ' intention/' is to argue either 
schismatical pravity after the fashion of the 
Donatists, or to betray an entire ignorance of 
the fundamental principles of Canon Law. No 
one, it is held for granted, takes seriously the 
modern Roman fad of re-baptizing converts 
from the Anglican Church ; nor is it possible to 
imagine that the late pronunciamento entitled 
" Apostolicce Curce " had any other origin than 
that of misconception, based upon misrepre- 
sentation of the real merits of the case. The 
fault found with the revisers of the Anglican 



68 THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 

ordinal, evidently, is not lack of intention, for 
nothing could be plainer than that the inten- 
tion was to restore the Episcopate to the place 
it originally held in the hierarchy of order — this 
is openly declared and reiterated, again and 
again — and in doing so, to make union with 
Rome forever impossible, except on condition 
of its recognition of the three orders of the 
Ministry, as handed down from the Apostles, 
to be the only valid form of Church organiza- 
tion. The Council of Trent, while it is afraid 
to express itself with clearness on the subject, 
is forced to acknowledge this, and may fairly 
be claimed as not in sympathy with the late 
declaration. 

It is equally plain that the office of the 
Priesthood provided for is not the type of 
Priesthood which the Church of Rome in her 
tampering with the ordinal has tried to intro- 
duce into the teaching of the Catholic Church. 
It is a Priesthood which, in its approach to the 
mystery of the Christian sacrifice, is taught to 
discriminate between the Sacr amentum, the 
res Sacramenti, and the virtus Sacramenti, and 
offer worship to the Three Persons of the 



THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 69 

Ever-blessed Trinity in the relation which 
they bear, each to the other, in Creation, Re- 
demption, and Sanctification. The Priest who 
ministers at the altar is not supposed to be 
of the order of Aaron offering a bloody victim, 
but in the line of Melchizedek, without father 
and without mother, by the virtue of the power 
of an endless life. It is not contact with the 
lamb once slain he seeks to effect, " sensual- 
it er ; ' nor does he propose " non solum Sacra- 
mento sed in veritate to handle with his hands, 
bruise, and grind w T ith his teeth, the Body and 
Blood of Christ," * as the Roman Church in 
the time of Innocent II. (1059) compelled 
Berengar of Tours, under penalty of death, to 
affirm to be his belief; but, in the spirit of 
the Eastern Liturgies, " rendering thanks to 
the Creator of the Universe, to eat the bread 
offered with thanksgiving and prayer over the 
things offered, which becometh, for the pray- 

1 " Panem et vinum . . . Sacramento sed in veritate, 

post consecrationem, non so- manibus sacerdotum tractari, 

lum, sacramentium, sed etiam frangi, et fidelium dentibus 

verum corpus et sanguinem atteri." — Robertson, History 

Domini nostri Jesu Christi of the Christian Church, vol. 

esse et sensualiter, non solum iv, p. 361. 



70 THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 

er's sake, a certain Holy Body, which hal- 
loweth those who use the same for a holy 
purpose." 

It was the deliberate " intention ' of the 
Revisers of the Ordinal to reject from it the 
carpocratian notion of physical contact with 
the Body and Blood of Christ, declared in the 
words just quoted to be the doctrine of the 
Roman Church. That with this " intention ,; 
it should be charged that the Anglican Church, 
in the office headed " The Form and Manner 
of Ordering Priests/ ' is using words intended 
to deceive, is to be interpreted only as mean- 
ing that she rejects the notion of Priesthood 
and Sacrifice, held by the Roman Church, as a 
fond invention of the Aristotelian philosophy, 
and puts in its place the doctrine of S. Paul 
in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Du Pin, in the 
fourth volume of his History of the Christian 
Church (pp. 174-5), puts the question at issue 
so clearly, that I cannot do better than quote 
his own words: " The manner of handling the 
Christian Religion and its mysteries has not 
always been uniform in the Church. It has 
changed at different times, according to the 



THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 7 l 

different circumstances, or different inclina- 
tions of men. The Apostles were contented 
to teach the doctrines they had learned from 
Jesus Christ with simplicity. The holy Fathers 
and Ecclesiastical Authors who lived in the 
first ages of the Church, did not enlarge upon 
the explication of our mysteries, and never 
made use of philosophy but to baffle the 
errors of the Pagans. Afterwards heresies 
gave occasion to search into doctrines more 
narrowly, to fix the terms to be made use of 
in order to express them, and to draw conse- 
quences from articles expressly revealed ; but 
it was only through a kind of necessity that 
the Fathers entered into that discussion and 
they were very cautious of forming new ques- 
tions about our mysteries out of wantonness. 
As they wrote about doctrines but upon the 
occasion of heresies, so they wrote no treatises 
expressly in theology upon the doctrines of 
religion : but they handled them occasionally 
when any new heresy appeared. The Holy 
Scriptures and tradition were the principles 
which they depended upon, nor did they em- 
ploy reasoning, but only to discover the sense 



72 THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 

of Scripture, and the Fathers. ... It was 
not till the eleventh century that they began 
to teach in public schools the philosophy of 
Aristotle, according to the method of the Ara- 
bians. It was insensibly brought into divinity, 
and it was produced not only to explain and 
decide common questions, but also made use 
of to raise new ones. . . . But as it is 
difficult * not to wander when one takes a new 
road/ several of these authors fell into divers 
errors, or at least expressed themselves in a 
manner that was condemned by those who 
were used to the opinions and ways of speak- 
ing of the Fathers. This method likewise 
raised abundance of controversies and disputes 
among the divines. Every one, in order to 
maintain his own opinion, employed what- 
ever was most subtle in the logic and meta- 
physics of the Aristotelians, which produced 
an infinite number of questions and dis- 
putes, full of so many quirks and turns, that 
none but such as were conversant in that art 
understood anything of the matter, and which 
it was impossible ever to terminate/ ' No 
words could more aptly characterize the nature 



THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 73 

of the changes in the Ordinal of the Roman 
Church, by the additions made to it from time 
to time, to give expression to the teaching of 
the Schoolmen, and the results which followed, 
in the "quirks and turns' which none but 
such as were conversant with the metaphysics 
of the schools could understand, and which it 
was impossible ever to terminate. Morinus, 
as we have seen, does not hesitate to declare 
that the Schoolmen, in making the essence of 
the sacrament of Ordination to consist in the 
delivering of the paten and chalice, and the 
taking part in the offering of the sacred 
species, were in utter ignorance of what they 
ought to have known, viz. : that in the Latin 
Rites before the eleventh century, as well as 
among the Eastern Churches, Greek, Coptic, 
and Syrian, from time immemorial, the deliv- 
ery of the vessels with the words " Receive 
power to offer sacrifice to God and to celebrate 
Masses " was a thing unknown. 

Martene went over the ground anew, and 
came to the conclusion: " Since the matter of 
Ordination to the Presbyterate cannot possibly 
be the traditio instrumentorum, nor the form, 



74 THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 

the solemn words which the Bishop pro- 
nounces when he delivers them, we are forced 
to conclude that the whole essence of the Rite 
is in the imposition of hands, and in the pray- 
ers which follow after, especially the three 
long prayers which by way of preface are 
sung, known in the Ancient Pontificals by the 
name of the Consecratio. This alone the Orien- 
tals, this alone the ancient Fathers, this alone 
(Holy) Scripture acknowledge." What, then, 
becomes of Eugenius IV., and his declaration 
that the essence of the Rite consists in the 
delivery of the sacred vessels and taking part in 
the offering of the sacred species ? The Council 
of Trent, taking warning from the examination 
given to the subject by the later Schoolmen, did 
not controvert the position taken by Morinus 
and Martene, and contented itself with the 
proviso that the Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, at 
the close of the Rite, is not said in vain by the 
Bishop. Which is the greater authority — the 
Council or the Pope? Both, say some: im- 
possible, it is afifirmed, by others. At length 
the happy discovery was made, that the act of 
Ordination consists of two things, different in 



THE DOCTRINE OF INTENTION. 7$ 

kind, yet making one complex whole. The 
reputation of Eugenius was saved, by saying 
that the " Porrectio'instrumentorum " is of the 
matter of the Rite, and the Accipe Spiritum 
Sanctum, with the power to remit sin, the 
form. But what if the Bishop should die be- 
tween the acts ? Billuart answereth not. 

It is to be remembered, as bearing upon 
the question of intention, that the Prayer 
Book and Ordinal of 1662 were the act of both 
Houses of Convocation, and express the mind 
of the Church of England both in opposition 
to the rival parliamentary Book of Common 
Prayer, prepared by the House of Commons 
Committee of Religion, at the time, and to 
the attempt afterwards made under William 
III. to substitute the word "Minister" for 
" Priest " in the rubric before the Absolution, 
and to omit the words '* remission of sins " as 
" not very intelligible "I 1 

1 See Joyce's The Church of as Testified by the Records of 
England her Own Reformer her Convocations, pp. 232-244. 



VI. 

THE REVISED ORDINAL. 

THREE things the Church of England sought 
to accomplish in her revision of the Ordinal. 
She had it in mind, first of all, to justify the 
ground she had always taken against the 
usurped claims of the See of Rome, by re- 
establishing the hierarchy of order as left by 
the Apostles. She had, in the second place, 
to purge the Ordinal from the mediaeval accre- 
tions which, under the cover of the decree of 
Eugenius IV., had introduced a new order of 
Ministry in the place of Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons. These things accomplished, she 
had, in opposition to sectaries of every kind, 
to maintain and preserve, in the third place, 
the traditions of the Catholic Church. The 
Prayer Book of 1549 is the product of the first; 
the Book of 1552 is the witness to the second; 
the Revision of 1662 is the result of the third. 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 77 

The reformation of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries was not a thing of man's de- 
vising, but of God's sending. It was a flood 
in which the old world perished, and a new 
order of things sprung to life. It was, in Bib- 
lical phrase, an end of the world in which the 
old and the new came together, collided and 
assimilated. It was a Divine visitation, in 
which, as in the fall of Jerusalem, Judgment 
and Salvation went hand in hand together. In 
Italy, in Germany, in England, in France, in 
Spain, in the Netherlands, and in the countries 
of Northern Europe, Church and State alike 
felt the shock. The Council of Trent was, 
after a fashion, a Reforming Council. The 
Jesuit order arose out of the attempt to rec- 
oncile the old and the new. In England the 
travail was great, the conflict prolonged. 
Church and State in England joined hands 
together, demanding release from the exorbi- 
tant and constantly increasing demands of the 
Papacy. The State refused any longer to al- 
low its money to go to the support of foreign 
hirelings. The Church, in Convocation, asked 
to be freed from an usurpation which could 



78 THE REVISED ORDINAL. 

not, in support of its claim to jurisdiction in 
England, produce a single Canon of any 
Ecumenical Council. 

To destroy is one thing; to rehabilitate 
and restore, another. In the preface to the 
Ordinal, the Church of England says that " It 
is evident unto all men, diligently reading 
Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from 
the Apostles' time there hath been these 
orders of Ministers in Christ's Church, Bish- 
ops, Priests, and Deacons : which Offices were 
evermore had in such reverent estimation, 
that no man by his own private authority 
might presume to execute any of them, except 
he were first of all called, tried, examined, and 
known to have such qualities as were requisite 
for the same. And also by public prayer, 
with imposition of hands, approved and admit- 
ted thereunto. And therefore, to the intent 
these orders should be continued, and rever- 
ently used, and esteemed, in this Church of 
England, it is requisite that no man (not being 
at this present, Bishop, Priest, nor Deacon) 
shall execute any of them, except he be called, 
tried, examined, and admitted, according to 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 79 

the form hereafter following. " The Church of 
England in this declaration cut the gordian- 
knot, by the sword of the Spirit. She appealed 
from the schoolmen and their subtleties to 
Holy Scripture and ancient authors as testify- 
ing to the Apostolic constitution of the Church : 
she provided for the perpetuating of the suc- 
cession, and forbade any man in his " own 
private authority " to attempt to execute any 
Office of the Sacred Ministry, without first 
being duly called to the same. 

But it was not enough to re-establish the 
primitive order and discipline of the Church ; 
there were still left the abuses which had 
sprung out of the introduction of the '* Por- 
rectio ' into the ritual of Ordination. As 
early as the Council of Paris, 12 12, the saying 
of Masses, for the living and the dead, had 
begun to assume the form of a trade. In 
the fifteenth century, the founding of Chan- 
tries where one or more Priests were paid 
to celebrate, daily, one or more Masses for the 
founder and his family, became a popular 
form of religious devotion. Private Masses 
began to take the place of the one common 



80 THE REVISED ORDINAL. 

Mass : it was held that special Masses were of 
more avail for the delivering of souls from 
purgatory than the regular offering of the 
Eucharistic sacrifice in public worship. It is 
the rule of the Eastern Church that a Priest 
cannot repeat the offering in the same Church 
on the same day; but in the West no sooner 
did the offering of private Masses become a 
matter of gain, in the hands of the Chantry 
Priests, than any number of Masses were 
said; and no Priest would receive Commun- 
ion at another Priest's hands. In the Ordi- 
nal of 1549, the giving of paten and chalice 
was retained as a sign of induction into office, 
but to mark that the Priest was to be a 
Minister of the Word, as well as of the 
Sacraments, a Bible was added; in 1552 the 
" Porrectio instrumentorum " was stricken 
out, as the root from which had sprung the 
whole of the superstitious growth that had led 
to the multiplication of altars, and the selling 
of Masses for purposes of gain. The over- 
laying of the original Rite of laying on of 
hands and the invocation of the Holy Ghost, 
by a mass of ceremonial, which, however much 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 8 1 

calculated to attract the masses, had ceased 
to be either impressive or significant, brought 
on a reaction in favour of greater simplicity 
in the inducting of Bishops and Priests into 
office. It was found, by experience, that the 
ceremonial adjuncts had not only been the 
means of keeping out of sight the original 
significance of the Rite, but had been made a 
cover for the introducing of novelties of every 
kind, to the detriment of the faith, and the 
hurt of true religion. If it served no other pur- 
pose, the Ordinal of the second Prayer Book of 
Edward VI. made it clear that the essential ele- 
ment in the Sacrament of Order is the laying on 
of hands, and the invocation of the Holy Ghost. 
Roman Catholic writers, of the ultramon- 
tane type, have made the Ordinal of Edward 
VI. their special object of attack ; their 
reason for so doing is, that it uncovers the 
weakness of their position, by sweeping out 
of existence the blind which, under the guise 
of ceremonial, they have used for introducing 
their scholastic doctrine of Transubstantiation 
into the making of Priests. It is in vain they 
attempt to prove that matter and form are 



82 THE REVISED ORDINAL. 

not preserved, in the simple rite of laying on 
of hands, and the invocation of the Holy 
Ghost. Driven from their position, by their 
own most approved theologians, they take 
refuge in " intention " ; and in doing so shuffle 
and play false with the principle, which it is to 
the honour of the Roman Church that she has 
put beyond contradiction, viz., that the valid- 
ity of the Sacrament does not depend upon 
the subjective condition of the Minister of the 
Rite, either in the way of personal holiness, 
or logical apprehension of that which he is 
called upon to perform. 

Done with the intriguing Jesuitical faction 
which has never ceased to labour to disturb 
her peace, the Anglican Church had another 
enemy to overcome before she was permitted 
to be at rest to do her appointed work. Two 
Martyrs, at least, witness to the purity of her 
' ' intention ' ' in seeking to maintain the Catholic 
doctrine of Sacrifice and Priesthood, and the 
liturgical worship of the Church, as part and 
parcel of the tradition which from the begin- 
ning has been received by the Church of Eng- 
land. The great question of the time was, 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 83 

whether the old Church of England is to be 
the Church of the nation, or there is to be a 
new Church, and a new Prayer Book, to suit 
the demands of the Puritans. The results of 
the struggle, to which King and Archbishop 
gave their lives, are embodied in the Prayer 
Book of 1662. As the Puritans contended 
that there is no difference between Priest and 
Bishop, since their offices were not distin- 
guished at the time of Laying on of Hands, 
the revisers of the Prayer Book of 1552, in 
order to set the matter at rest, so far as the 
intention of the Church of England is con- 
cerned, added the words " for the office and 
work of a Priest/ ' in the one case, and " for 
the office and work of a Bishop," in the other, 
to the simpler form of 1552. In so doing she 
went farther than the Roman Church has ever 
done in declaring her " intention," and " has 
killed two birds with one stone": — she has 
not only replied to the Puritan quibble, but 
has also put herself in declaration, against the 
Roman notion of the Episcopate being only a 
higher grade of the Priesthood, and not a dif- 
ferent Order. 



84 THE REVISED ORDINAL. 

The answer to the plea of lack of inten- 
tion, then, is the Prayer Book of 1662. The 
Church of England, in answer to the Puritan 
attempt to degrade the Episcopate, and to put 
the Presbyterate in its place, has put herself 
upon record that she holds to the Apostolic 
tradition of three Orders of the Ministry, 
each with its own indelible character, each in 
its own way perpetuating the three-fold Minis- 
try of our Lord. She has affirmed, moreover, 
that a Priest is sent not only to be a Minister 
of the Word, but a sacerdos, whose duty it is 
to offer in behalf of the people, and admin- 
ister the Sacrament. She required, more- 
over, that every Minister who, at the time, 
held any preferment in the Church shall 
affirm his belief in the Ordinal, by making 
the following declaration: " I, A. B., do 
declare my unfeigned assent and consent to 
all and everything contained and prescribed in 
and by the book, entitled ' The Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, and Administration of the Sacra- 
ments; and other Rites and Ceremonies of the 
Church/ according to the use of the Church 
of England, together with the Psalter or 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 85 

Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be 
said or sung in Churches; and the Form and 
Manner of making, ordaining, and consecrat- 
ing of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. " 

There is no portion of her Liturgical Version 
of which the Church of England has such good 
reason to be proud as her Ordinal. It is as far 
superior to the Roman Pontifical, as it is to 
the attempt of Baxter to reform the Litur- 
gy after his own fashion. Nowhere do the 
wisdom and moderation which characterized 
the Church of her England, in dealing with 
the opposition she had to encounter, on 
the right hand and on the left, manifest itself 
more than in the way she approached the 
reconstruction of the discordant elements with 
which she had to deal when she attempted 
the revision of the Ordinal. It was a work for 
which Cranmer was peculiarly fitted. What- 
ever his logical defects when he had to deal 
with matters of doctrine, his Litany will endure 
as long as the English tongue is spoken, to 
attest his appreciation of all that is noblest and 
best in the devotional literature of the past. 



86 THE REVISED ORDINAL. 

In the year 1541 we find him superintending 
a revision of the Service-books. In 1542 he 
gives notice " that all Mass-books, Antiphon- 
ers, portiuses (breviaries) in the Church of 
England should be newly examined, correct- 
ed, reformed, . . . and that after ejecting su- 
perstitious Orations, Collects, Versicles, etc., 
their places should be supplied by services 
made out of the Scriptures and other authentic 
doctors/' The Ordinal of 1550 was in all es- 
sential points the same as the Sarum Pontifi- 
cal. The distinction between what was of the 
Essence of the Rite, and the Ceremonies 
which in the growth of centuries had been 
allowed to accumulate around the Rite, was 
carefully observed throughout. 

Among the ceremonies dispensed with was 
the anointing of the hands of Priest and 
Bishop — a ceremony which had crept into the 
Roman Rite from the Celtic Church, by way 
of Gaul, after the ninth century; the cere- 
monies of the Ring and Mitre in the consecra- 
tion, of still later introduction, were likewise 
set aside. The truth is that ceremonial had be- 
come so burdensome that it had ceased to be 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 87 

significant. It was regarded not as an acces- 
sory, but as necessary to valid Ordination ; and 
the time had arrived when it was desirable to 
make plain what is of the Essence of the Rite 
of Ordination, and what is not. 

But more important still was the casting out 
of the things which had been introduced with 
mischievous intent and were used to symbolize 
false doctrine. The presentation of the ves- 
sels, as a sign of induction, was allowed in 
the Prayer Book of 1549, but afterwards re- 
moved for the reason that it symbolized that 
half truth, which the mediaeval Church had 
made everything ; and had therefore come to 
be regarded as essential. " The priest's lips 
should keep knowledge ' (Mai. ii. 7). The 
celebration of the Holy Mysteries is one part 
of the priestly calling, not the whole. We 
know as a matter of fact how hard it is to 
strike the balance between the devotional and 
ceremonial part of religion, and the building of 
the people up in the duties of their high calling. 

And it was not only the striking out of the 
*' Porrectio ' that was necessary, but the re- 
moval also of the adjuncts which had gathered 



88 THE REVISED ORDINAL, 

around it and made it appear to be of the 
very " Essence of the Rite of Ordination/' 
The second Imposition of Hands in the Ro- 
man Ordinal must mean either that the first 
was not sufficient; or it was intended to de- 
grade the Apostolic Rite and make it serve 
their purpose of an introduction to something 
more vital than itself, without which it was to 
be regarded as of little or no account. Hence 
Maskell, in speaking of the insuperable diffi- 
culties which had baffled the efforts of the 
Council of Trent to bring order out of dis- 
order, says, in speaking of the revisers of the 
Anglican Ordinal, " it was still more wise and 
accordant with all ancient precedent both of 
opinion and practice, by uniting the two Forms, 
and restoring the one imposition of hands, to 
remove all doubts and difficulties on the sub- 
ject ' {Mon. Rit. Celebratio Ordinum, vol. iii, 
p. 221, n.). 

It may then be confidently affirmed, without 
fear of contradiction, that the Ordinal of 1662 
is in every way superior, both as to matter 
and form, to the modern Roman Rite. It 
has reduced to unity that which for centuries 



THE REVISED ORDINAL. 89 

had been a mere disjecta membra, without 
connection of parts: it has provided for the 
necessary ceremonial adjuncts to give signifi- 
cance to the Rite ; it has taken out of the way 
all possible objection to the form of the Rite 
by discriminating between Bishops, Priests, 
and Deacons, in the receiving of the Grace of 
Ordination. It is in this respect more perfect 
than the Roman Ordinal itself. When to these 
things we add the declaration under which it 
was set forth, it will be seen how futile the 
attempt is to invalidate English Orders on the 
ground of intention: " And be it further 
enacted by the authority aforesaid that no 
person whatsoever shall henceforth be capable 
to be admitted to any parsonage, vicarage, 
benefice, or other ecclesiastical promotion or 
dignity whatsoever, nor shall presume to con- 
secrate and administer the Holy Sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper before such time as he shall 
be ordained priest according to the form and 
manner in and by the said book prescribed, 
unless he have formerly been made priest by 
Episcopal Ordination " (Act of Uniformity ', 14 
Charles II., cap. 4, A.D. 1662). 



VIL 



L ENVOI. 

The tone and temper of the Italian Mission 
in England have undergone little or no change 
within the last thirteen hundred years. When 
Augustine, at the instance of Gregory the 
Great, entered on his work he found himself 
at variance with the remnant of the British 
Church that had survived the inroad of the 
Angles and Saxons, in some unimportant 
matters of ceremonial observance. The Ro- 
man Monks differed from the British in the 
w T ay of cutting the hair. The Roman tonsure 
was in the form of a circle, around which was 
left a fringe of hair, more or less wide, mys- 
tically regarded as symbolizing the Saviours 
crown. The Celtic tonsure was in the form of 
a half moon extending from ear to ear, with 
the back of the head unshorn. The Roman 
party, with a view to put the stamp of op- 



L ENVOI. 91 



probrium on the native Rite, declared it to 
be the invention of the Arch-heretic, Simon 
Magus; while others, to show their contempt 
for the national Church, attributed its origin 
to the swineherd of King Logharie. 

Another point of difference was the time for 
keeping of the Easter festival. Prior to the 
Council of Nicaea the two Churches were in 
the habit of celebrating Easter at the same 
time, the most ancient Roman table being in 
accord with that of the British Church. The 
British Church during the time of its separa- 
tion, through the irruption of the barbarians, 
held on to its old eighty-four-year cycle, while 
the Roman Church adopted an improved form 
of intercalation, not on theological but on 
astronomical grounds. 

There were other differences, both in the 
mode of administering baptism, and the prac- 
tice of single ordination, but with the excep- 
tion of the latter the diversities were few, and 
not of a serious kind. They would have been 
arranged probably but for an unfortunate oc- 
currence which took place some time after the 
starting of the Mission. Held in doubt as to 



92 U ENVOI. 



what was best under the circumstances to do, 
the British Bishops took the advice of a wise 
and holy man. He advised them to be guided 
by circumstances when they met with Augus- 
tine according to appointment. If he rose to 
meet them when they approached they were 
to enter into conference ; if he refused to do 
so, they were to withhold their confidence. It 
was a simple test, yet it implied a good deal. 
The British Bishops were to be ready to sur- 
render things of minor importance, but when 
it came to assumption of authority, they were 
to be on their guard. It is a story with a 
moral to it, and I propose to devote this con- 
cluding chapter to its illustration. 

One of the earliest controversies in the 
Christian Church was about this very matter 
of the keeping of Easter. The Jewish con- 
verts to the faith were accustomed to join to- 
gether in one their celebration of the Jewish 
and the Christian Passover. It was in some 
respects a good thing, for it kept alive the 
notion of the organic unity of the old and the 
new dispensations. But there were disadvan- 
tages which, from another point of view as 



C ENVOI. 93 



time went on, came to light, and more than 
counterbalanced the advantages. What if the 
day for the keeping of the Jewish Passover, 
the 14th of Nisan, fell upon a Friday ? The 
Gentile Churches, not bound by Jewish tradi- 
tion, solved the difficulty by keeping the feast, 
not on the day of the new moon, but on the 
Sunday after. It was the better day, for it 
brought to light the fact, that our Lord was 
the beginning of a new dispensation, as well 
as the fulfilment and completion of the old. 

When Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna and dis- 
ciple of S. John, went to Rome, the difference 
of observance, between the Jewish and Gentile 
Churches, became a practical question. Shall 
Polycarp be compelled to do as Rome does ? 
Or shall religion stoop to acknowledge the 
courtesy due to a stranger and respect his 
wishes ? Anicetus, who was Bishop of Rome 
at the time, placed at the disposal of the 
Bishop of Smyrna a Church where he might 
celebrate the feast at his own time, and in his 
own way. It was a courteous act, and it 
affords positive proof that diversity of Rites 
and Ceremonies was not only tolerated at 



94 r envoi. 



the time in Rome, but was regarded as part 
of the Church's Catholic heritage. 

Forty years after, things came to an issue 
between Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, and 
Victor of Rome. Victor, with a view of se- 
curing uniformity, sent out a request to the 
Churches asking them to meet together in 
Council, and take action on the Paschal ques- 
tion. The Bishop of Ephesus, in replying for 
the Churches of Asia Minor, stood upon the 
Apostolic traditions of his See, and the prac- 
tice of S. John, and gave Victor to understand 
that he was prepared to defend his position, 
and would not suffer dictation from the Ro- 
man See. Victor did not heed the warning 
of the venerable Bishop of Ephesus, and took 
upon himself to excommunicate the Churches 
of Asia Minor, and all who were in sympathy 
with them in their keeping of the Easter feast. 
His action was not sustained by the Episcopate 
at large ; it did not please all the Bishops, 
Eusebius tells us (book V, xxiii-xxv). Ire- 
naeus, who had been brought up in Asia Minor, 
and followed in Gaul the Western custom, 
wrote to Victor and " fittingly admonished 



n envoi. 95 



him that he had no right to cut off whole 
Churches of God which observed the traditions 
of an ancient custom/' Gaul, under the 
leader of Irenaeus, joined Asia Minor in rebuk- 
ing the arrogant spirit of Victor of Rome, and 
the Churches of Asia Minor went on following 
their own customs for eighty years and more, 
notwithstanding the excommunication. The 
Roman See, through its hasty and violent 
action, found itself virtually excommunicated 
by the Church throughout the world. The 
first Papal decretal failed of its mark, and it 
was left to the Council of Nicaea — the first 
Ecumenical Council — to adjust, in a conciliar 
way, the difficulty which the Decretal of Vic- 
tor only made worse. The significance of all 
this will appear later on when I come to deal 
with the False Decretals. It will then be seen 
that the Roman See has not only put another 
Ministry in the place of the Ministry insti- 
tuted by the Apostles, but has also used ille- 
gitimate means to force its " decretal system 
of law," and substitute it for " the conciliar 
law* of the Church, acting through its ecu- 
menical and provincial Councils. 



96 U ENVOI. 



The Church of North Africa held a position 
very similar to the Church of Asia Minor in 
the post-Apostolic age. It fought for the 
unity of the Church in opposition to schism 
as Asia Minor had contended for the Faith 
against heresy. It was ever ready to acknowl- 
edge the honorary primacy of the Roman See, 
but refused to recognize its claims to suprem- 
acy — happily for the Church, for had it done 
so the battle of Pelagianism would have been 
fought in vain. 

The African Church, in the year 416, in 
synods held at Carthage and Mileve, condemned 
Pelagius and Caelestius as heretics. They sent 
notice of their condemnation to Innocent I. 
who excommunicated them also. Zosimus, 
after succeeding Innocent in 417, opened up 
the case anew, called a synod at Rome and 
restored both Pelagius and Caelestius to com- 
munion, summoned Paulinus to appear at 
Rome, and excommunicated Heros and Laz- 
arus, Bishops of Gaul, who had taken part in 
accusing the heretics. Thereupon, after some 
correspondence with Zosimus, a Council of 
two hundred Bishops met at Carthage, which 



V ENVOI. 97 



not only in the most unmistakable terms con- 
demned Pelagianism as a heresy, but forbade 
appeals to Rome, on pain of excommunica- 
tion. It was declared to be a violation of all 
established law, that a Roman Council, under 
the dictation of the Pope, should undo the 
action of another provincial Council, approved 
and confirmed by his own predecessor. Pauli- 
nus, when called upon to appear at Rome, 
had refused to do so ; the Council of Carthage 
now takes the further step of forbidding ap- 
peals to Rome altogether. Zosimus, like Vic- 
tor, found he had made a bad mistake. He 
roused up Augustine, as Victor had Irenaeus to 
deal with. He crept out of the position he 
had put himself in, by writing a high-flown 
letter on the claims of the Roman See, declar- 
ing his readiness to consult his brethren, 
though of course the chair of Peter did not 
need any one to help it in determining what it 
ought to do! The Emperor Honorius now 
appeared upon the scene, and issued a rescript 
from Ravenna (418) condemning the new 
heretics. Thereupon Zosimus faced about, 
joined in the excommunication of Pelagius and 
7 



98 n envoi 



Caelestius, and required all Bishops to sub- 
scribe to his circular letter on the subject. 

The relations between Rome and North 
Africa are illustrated by another case of a dif- 
ferent kind, in which the Roman See falls into 
the snare in which pride and arrogance are sure 
to be caught, when they refuse to make con- 
fession of their fault, and are determined, at 
all hazards, to maintain an unjust case. What 
cannot be done by fair means must be done 
by foul. A Priest of Mauritania, who had 
been excommunicated by Urbanus of Sicca, 
appealed to Zosimus for restoration. Zosimus 
ordered Apiarius to be restored, but Bishop 
Urbanus paid no heed to the command. Zosi- 
mus thereupon sent Faustinus, Bishop of Po- 
tentia, with two presbyters, charged with a 
commonitorium in his name. They appeared 
at a Council called to receive their communi- 
cation. They were ordered to produce their cre- 
dentials. When Faustinus the legate read the 
commonitorium , in which was inserted a Canon, 
quoted as one of the Canons of Nicaea, by which 
a Bishop, deposed by a provincial Council, 



L ENVOI. 99 



was allowed to appeal to Rome, Alypius, who, 
it will be remembered, was a life-long friend 
of S. Augustine, was present at the Council, as 
Bishop of Tagaste. When the Canon quoted 
as a Canon of Nicaea had been read, Alypius 
interrupted the Roman legate, saying, " We 
do not find these words in the Greek copies of 
the Canons of Nicaea." After some discussion 
the Council was adjourned, until opportunity 
should be given to obtain certified copies of 
the Canons of the Great Council. It was 
found, upon examination, that the Canon 
quoted as a Canon of the Council of Nicaea 
was a Canon, not of the Great Ecumenical 
Council, but a Canon of the Council of Sar- 
dica, in which Roman influence had predomi- 
nated. The case was opened up anew. Api- 
arius made confession of his wrong-doing. He 
was dismissed from his See, and the African 
Church wrote to Celestine I. (the successor of 
Zosimus), begging that, in future, he would not 
lend an ear to persons who came from Africa. 
' The receiving of appeals/' they declared, 
' was an attack upon the rights of the African 
Church. What was alleged in its favour as a 



100 V ENVOI. 



Nicene Canon could not be found in the genu- 
ine Acts of Nicaea, which had been obtained 
from Constantinople and Alexandria " (Hefele, 
vol. iii, p. 480). 

It would seem to be beyond the bounds 
of credibility that, after such an exposure, 
the Roman See would ever attempt again to 
ground its claims to supremacy by tampering 
with the Canons of the Council of Nicsea. 
Notwithstanding, when the question of suprem- 
acy came up anew, at the Council of Con- 
stantinople, the very same claims were made, 
and the proof of forgery was even more fatal 
to the justice of the claim than in North Africa. 
This time the contest was between Leo the 
Great, represented by his delegates, and the 
See of Constantinople, " the New Rome," 
now rising into power. When the Imperial 
Commissioners who presided at the Council, 
called upon the opposing parties to produce the 
Canons on which they based their claims, the 
Roman delegate Paschasinus produced the 
6th Canon of the 318 holy fathers on the side 
of Rome, quoting the words, " Quod Eccle- 



V ENVOI. 10 1 



sia Romana semper habuit primatium," etc. 
^Etius, the Archdeacon of Constantinople, 
who defended the action of the Council in 
conferring new powers of jurisdiction on the 
Imperial City, handed a codex to one of the 
secretaries, and asked for the authentic Greek 
words of the Canon, cited by Paschasinus, to 
be read aloud. No Greek word corresponding 
to primatium (primacy) could be found in the 
Greek text. On the contrary, according to 
the " ancient customs/' it was found that 
Rome was placed on an equal footing with 
Antioch and Alexandria. It has been urged, 
in behalf of Zosimus, that he may himself 
have been deceived in quoting the Sardican 
Canon on appeals as a Canon of the Council 
of Nicaea, for the reason that the Sardican 
Canons were found, as an appendage to the 
Canons of Nicaea, at Rome ; and it was the 
habit of the Romans to regard the one as of 
equal authority with the other. It is a poor 
excuse for a See claiming infallibility. But 
whatever apology may be pleaded in behalf of 
Zosimus, there is no excuse to be offered for 
tampering with the Canons of Nicaea and the 



102 L' EN VOL 



placing of the word primatium in a Canon 
where the Roman See is made to hold the 
same rank as the Sees of Antioch and Alex- 
andria. The very Canon on which Leo, follow- 
ing * * the custom of the Roman Church, ' ' rested 
his cause (even if it had not been tampered 
with by introducing a word which has nothing 
to correspond to it in the original), would not 
have helped to establish the Roman claim, for 
it declares that the privileges of the three great 
patriarchal Sees, Rome, Antioch, and Alexan- 
dria, were accorded to them by u the ancient cus- 
toms " ; not based, as alleged, on Divine right. 

Not able to force the ancient law of the 
Church into a recognition of the absolute 
supremacy of " Peter's Chair," the next thing 
to be done was to make a new form of law, 
which shall take the place of the old " con- 
ciliar law" of the Church; and so establish 
the claim to plenitude of power which cannot, 
without the charge of fraud, find recognition 
in the Canon law of the Nicene age. How 
shall it be brought about ? Who can be found 
to make the attempt ? 



i: envoi. 103 



Many literary forgeries have been attempted 
to impose upon the credulity of mankind, but 
it may without exaggeration be affirmed that 
never has been a forgery committed so won- 
derful in its character, so far-reaching and 
mighty in its results, as that which made its 
appearance in the middle of the ninth century, 
known as " the False Decretals." It was, from 
first to last, a stupendous fraud. It emanated 
from the school of Boniface of Mentz, and 
was put forth with a view of justifying the 
pretensions of the Roman See from the time 
of Zosimus to Nicholas I. So artfully was 
the forgery done that the Popes of the time 
were themselves betrayed into a belief of 
the alleged Decretals. The wish was father 
to the thought ; they greedily swallowed the 
bait, and began to act upon the newly discov- 
ered letters of Popes, extending in regular suc- 
cession from Siricius up to S. Clement, the 
immediate successor of S. Peter in the Roman 
See. Victor I., in the close of the second 
century, writes a letter to Theophilus of Alex- 
andria, in the beginning of the fifth century. 
The early Bishops of Rome quote the Revised 



104 V ENVOI. 



Version of S. Jerome with the greatest famil- 
iarity. Anacletus, named as second in the 
order of Roman Bishops, assures us that " this 
sacrosant and Apostolic Roman Church did 
not obtain its primacy, or acquire its eminence 
of power, over all Churches, and the whole 
flock of the Christian people, from the Apos- 
tles, but from our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ/ ' And " this Apostolic See has been 
made the hinge and head of all Churches by 
the Lord Himself, and no other; and as a door 
is guided by the hinge, so, through the Lord's 
institution, all Churches are guided by the 
authority of the Holy See." Anacletus, in 
his elaborate attempt at symbolism, does not 
think it worth while to tell us who invented 
the " hinge." Gratian, in the twelfth cen- 
tury, embodied these forged Decretals in his 
Concordantia Discordantia Canonum y and they 
became part and parcel of the Ecclesiastical 
Law to which the Popes are chiefly indebted 
for the authority they exercised in the thir- 
teenth and following centuries. The genuine- 
ness of the False Decretals was taken for 
granted, their principles were carried out sys- 



VENVOL I05 



tematically ; and so Decretal law, based upon 
the Decrees of the Popes, was made to take 
the place of the old Canonical system. It was 
not until the middle of the sixteenth century 
that the fraud was exposed by the Magdeburg 
Centuriators. Blondell, in the seventeenth 
century, the two Ballerini, in the eighteenth 
century, succeeded in securing universal ac- 
knowledgment to the spuriousness of the 
Decretals before the time of Siricius. But 
Gratian had done his work; the Decretal sys- 
tem took the place of the old Conciliar system. 
As the Schoolmen had succeeded in substitut- 
ing a new order of Ministry, Priest, Deacon, 
and Sub-deacon, for the three Orders instituted 
by the Apostles,' so the school of Canon Law, 
founded at Bologna by Gratian, substituted 
the Decretal system which made the Pope a 
law unto himself for the system of Canon Law 
based upon the acts of the Ecumenical Coun- 
cils, and the practice of the Universal Church 
in its Provincial and Diocesan synods. 



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